Small Price Variation in very short term- Unclear situation in preparing for P4 and Win XP's coming.

Price will vary a little bit for the 1st half of Aug due to a combination of several factors including increasing motherboard shipment, P4 price cutting, i845 coming online, Win XP and Micron's early selling-out at July for Aug.'s quarter end.

M/B : Based on Taiwan MIC July's newest report for shipment and estimation, last year Taiwan motherboard's shipment was 84.372 million units, this year will decline 3.7% to 81.276 million units. That is a little bit depressed. On the other hand, the good news from the market is that motherboard shipments have increased around 9% MoM for July. Around 10~13% of shipments were P4 motherboards in Jun., and estimates are that P4 motherboard shipments will increase 15~18% in Jul. The significance of Intel P4's promotion, including further price cutting in October, is that Intel will try hard not just to push hard for P4 becoming mainstream but also driving up demand in current listless market. Although no one can now predict how long this kind of increase will last, it seems to be a good start. The DRAM market is watching carefully this trend especially in the early months.

P4 and WinXP: Although everyone recognizes that P4 won't really create a miracle rebound for the whole sluggish economy, the i845+SDRAM, RDRAM and effect of price cutting for the P4 still will push marketers to store some new product for show and inquiry. That certainly will help to build new orders a little to replace some old models. WinXP will have the same effect. DRAM marketers see this as another opportunity for a change in short term prices.

Micron : Quarter end is this month, but it began to sell-out from July. So, there probably won't be too much dumping pressure from Mircon, but be aware of the channels and distributors.