Even the DDR prices rebounded on last Tuesday , Oct. 21, demand remained slow on Wednesday and Thursday. Demand started to show up on late Thursday, Oct. 23 in Taipei market, mainly boosted by Europe orders, later came along with the China orders. USA markets remained cautious on Monday and came in the markets on late Tuesday. Some particular market traders, channel distributors turned positive and took action to pile up their inventory which push the prices up further. The hottest part is DDR400. This may resulted from the shrinking DDR400 premium over DDR333/266 and higher market share of Intel 865 series chipset in China market.

From 10/23 to 10/28, the average price of DDR256Mb 32x8 266MHz was up 2.5% from $4.35 to $4.46 while DDR333MHz increased 3. 68% from $4.34 to $4.5; DDR400MHz is the strongest, up 4.5% from $4.4 to $4.6. We are positive that this upturn trend may last for two weeks until mid-November. However, some marketers had DDR256Mb 32x8 266/ 333MHz with cost of $4.5 since late September and sustained the loss when price went down to $4.3(333MHz) and $4.2(266MHz) around mid-October. The marketers carried high cost inventory on-hand may try to sell parts to market as the price returned to their cost level and may interfere the uptrend momentum.

Even though the DDR spot prices surge, we still project the DDR contract prices remain flat for 1HNovember. Since it has approached the end of peak season of DRAM, DRAM makers may not have much power to raise the contract prices to the end of 2003. And, we see little chance for DDR spot prices to cross up DDR contract prices to the end of year even hot demand shows up in spot market. Therefore, we may consider DDR contract prices as ceiling for DDR spot prices for the coming weeks.

SDRAM 4Mx16 keep strong and the shortage will last to mid-November since it takes at least 2-3 weeks for manufactures to switch allocated capacities for SDRAM 4Mx16, thus, the price of 4Mx16 will keep at high level in the coming two weeks.