Reassessment for April's market prices.

:: Contract price forecasts turn slightly more positive than last week.

By contrast with last week's expectation of flat to slighlty down (within 5%) contract prices, this week we are revising our view to a more positive one - calling for flat or even slightly higher (5%). The major motivating factors for this about-face are:

1. PC OEM companies seem intent to stock up on inventory (possibly on logistic concerns with the war)? (we haven't observed any logistical problems in the DRAM business so far). The other possibility is they are beginning to aggregate low cost components during this slow moving season to bargain with DRAM makers - possibly hedging against future cost rises.

2. Wider product mix effects DRAM makers and the capability of being able to provide quality products to PC OEM customers are the causes for priority allocation issues. Instead of officially cutting back capacity in commodity DRAM, DRAM makers are allocating more capacity to do specialty DRAM - which also releases a little bit of the oversupply from commodity DRAM products. Meanwhile, lacking sufficiency in good yields from DDR 256Mb to 333MHz and 400MHz can lead to package selling allocation issues.

:: Asian market is actively engaging spot prices.

Recently, the Asian market is more active than the other areas in terms of spot market transactions. To tell you the honest truth, we think this market is attempting to better control spot market prices during the traditional 2Q slow season. However, the below cost DRAM prices have damaged the entire DRAM industry for a long time. Some DRAM module markers are cooperating with DRAM makers to help holding up spot prices in an attempt to reduce the huge loss (current selling price is still below the fully loaded cost - which is at best still above $4 for 256Mb chip). With the help from the DRAM food chain partners and some demand from Mainland China, prices can probably stay stable for a while (without further declines). On the other side, although we have seen sluggish transaction volumes in the US and European markets since the War began, the US and European markets are also keeping an eye on pricing trends in the Asian market and are not flowing down too much of cheaper compared to Asiat. The anti-dumping tariff issue is probably also one of the main reasons prices are holding there.

:: Prediction on spot market prices.

SDRAM module prices won't change that much in the spot market, however the volume of SDRAM chips are still quite active. Therefore, we assume the spot prices for SDRAM won't perform poorly this week. Regarding DDR spot prices, we expect prices will hold in the $3.2 to $3.5 range.