Chip sales down 2.7 percent in 2012
Semiconductor sales are down in line with gloomy forecasts, but things might not be as bad as they seem. Chip sales dipped $291.6 billion in 2012, down 2.7 percent from record sales of $299.5 billion...
View ArticleMicron reports net loss for Q2 2013
Micron Technology landed itself in the red for the second quarter, posting a net loss. The company, which makes DRAM and NAND flash memory, chips that provide the storage in mobile devices such as...
View ArticleNAND flash market hits record high
The PC market remains weak and the overheated smartphone and tablet market seems to be slowing down as well, but NAND makers are reporting their best quarter in history. According to IHS iSuppli, NAND...
View ArticlePC slump might well have a silver lining
There is no other way of saying it, PC makers are in a world of trouble. The slump is getting worse and many punters now believe that we might see two subsequent quarters of double digit decline. The...
View ArticleSmartphones to gobble up quarter of NAND production
The NAND memory market is slated to hit $30 billion this year, up 12 percent over $26.8 billion in 2012. The leading driver of NAND sales will remain smartphones, although this should change down the...
View ArticleWestern Digital ships first 5mm ultraslim drives
Western Digital is entering the hybrid hard drive market in style, with an ultraslim 2.5-inch SSHD designed for Ultrabooks and other anorexic devices. However, Western Digital is not ditching...
View ArticleFabless outfits to command third of IC market
According to a new set of figures out of IC Insights, fabless IC companies will command at least 33 percent of the total IC market by 2017. In the long run fables IC suppliers and the foundries that...
View ArticleToshiba develops second-gen 19nm NAND process
Toshiba has developed its second generation 19nm process that will be applied to mass produce 2-bit-per-cell 64Gb NAND memory chips starting later this month. The new process helped Toshiba develop...
View ArticleSanDisk splutters at Moore's Law
It appears that SanDisk has been talking up some technology which is a spectacular failure for Moore's Law. For those who came in late, Moore's Law is the self-fulfilling prophecy that transistor...
View ArticleToshiba considers ramping up NAND capacity
Prices of NAND flash memory are going up on the back of strong demand for smartphones and tablets. A year ago the situation was a bit different. The market was oversaturated and to deal with a slump in...
View ArticleMobile devices to gobble up more DRAM than PCs
Just in case someone needed more proof that the PC market is in trouble, IHS iSuppli has told the world that mobile devices will eat up more DRAM chips than traditional PCs by 2015. Mobile devices...
View ArticleApple’s new TV ads are bleak and depressing
Apple’s latest TV ads don’t seem to be going down well with US audiences because they're too depressing, and this is in a country that opened its arms to Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. The advert lacks zest...
View ArticleChina gives memory makers new life
A change in the way the mobile market is developing is giving Asian chip makers a way out of their woes. For a while now Asian chip makers have been dependant on the whims of Apple and kept supply...
View ArticleSamsung starts churning out 3D vertical NAND
Samsung is about to start producing 3D vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash chips, allowing for higher densities and more performance in a small package. The layers can be stacked vertically and Samsung says...
View ArticleIntel enables SSD overcocking
Intel has had a chequered past when it comes to overcocking. First it didn’t care, then it kindly asked people not to torture its lovely processors and then it realised it could make a quick buck...
View ArticleGoogle already has serious glass competition
Search engine Google's move into wearable computers had better move a little sharpish as some serious competition is starting to emerge. Google Glass is still in beta, like many of Google's projects,...
View ArticleIntel produces sound technology shocka
Fashion bag maker Intel seems to have been moving away from its roots lately, but it looks like its new SSD 730 series shows that there is still hardware life in the chipmaker yet. Lately the...
View ArticleThings look brighter for Micron
Things are starting to look up for the memory maker Micron. The outfit posted better fiscal second-quarter results than the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street had predicted. Micron reported a net profit...
View ArticleToshiba's OCZ Storage wants to kill off SATA for SSDs
Toshiba's OCZ Storage is hatching up a cunning plan to kill off SATA for storage by making improvements to PCIe hardware. PCIe has been around for a while and it offers more bandwidth than SATA. While...
View ArticleSanDisk to buy Fusion-io
SanDisk has announced that it will buy Fusion-io for about $1.1 billion to bolster its flash storage drives operations. Fusion-io has not done well since its initial public offering in 2011, but...
View Article