Chapter 448 Reorganization of the World DRAM Chip Market
August 2
Breaking news comes from Taiwan. Mainland "panel purchasing groups" have taken action one after another to purchase goods worth up to 4.3 billion US dollars from Taiwan's LCD panel companies that are on the verge of bankruptcy to help them tide over the difficulties.
The biggest difficulty is the "price butcher knife" of Huanghe Technology Group, owned by Royal Family Fund.
Just less than a week
The market price of LCD panels soared by 27.12%, which caused Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese panel companies whose lives were hanging by a thread to come back to their senses and continue to promote price increases in a tacit understanding, eventually reaching a huge increase of 47.44%.
The wheel of history has not deviated and is moving in the predetermined direction.
Taiwanese LCD panel manufacturers failed to overcome their inner greed, and reached a tacit agreement with Japanese and Korean panel companies to retaliate, forming a consistent price increase trend, which ultimately made the mainland home appliance companies swallow this bitter pill.
in new york
After Wang Yaocheng heard the news, he could only stand silently in front of the window and look into the distance, unable to do anything.
The fingers clenched tightly one by one, forming an iron fist.
If you come out to hang out, you will always have to pay back.
Man's fault is not his fault, but the world goes round and round. If you don't believe it, you look up and see, who will God spare?
August 16, 2002
After some difficult negotiations, Hynix, a subsidiary of Royal Family Fund, announced that it would acquire the Samsung Semiconductor Division for US$28.6 billion in cash and assume 62% of its debt, which is approximately US$16.6 billion. The acquisition price was US$45.2 billion.
The completion of this large-scale merger and acquisition transaction heralds the birth of the king of the world's DRAM chip market.
After the merger, Atlantic Jinko and Hynix accounted for 79.12% of the entire market, forming a monopoly market share.
at the same time
Hynix Semiconductor announced an important appointment, appointing Comrade Yukio Fuso Itamoto as President and CEO of Hynix, taking full leadership of this important semiconductor company.
While the Royal Family Fund was toasting and celebrating, the US-funded consortium also gained huge profits. The only loser was Lee Kun-hee and the Samsung Group he led.
news comes out
The world DRAM chip market price immediately rebounded sharply, rising 56% the next day. It is expected to usher in a rapid rebound, once again showing the extremely significant characteristics of the DRAM chip market.
Since then, the price has been almost the same every day, soaring 297.33% in more than two months, almost tripling the market size, reaching a scale of 33.7 billion U.S. dollars, and the profits are astonishing.
In recent years, manufacturers including Micron have been really suppressed.
As the saying goes, the greater the oppression, the stronger the rebound. These European and American manufacturers took the lead in raising their shipping prices, setting off a crazy storm of price increases in the world market.
Regarding this situation, Atlantic Jinko and Hynix are naturally happy to see the results, as these increases are huge profits.
True to that sentence;
When I make money, I can't count the money until I feel weak. When I lose money, I want to chop my hands off with a knife.
The price fluctuations in the world's DRAM chip market are simply worse than gambling. The development history from the 1980s can be found in a wavy line;
The entire market scale shows steep straight up and down curves, like the electrocardiogram of a patient with arrhythmia.
In the 1980s, Japanese storage companies took the initiative to initiate a crazy price war in order to defeat American companies and establish their market dominance.
The price of a DRAM memory chip plummeted from US$50 in 1981 to US$5 in 1982, a price reduction of 90%.
1984
Japanese-funded storage companies entered a period of industrial explosion, and used low prices to crazily attack the American market. They defeated American companies and established their dominance in the market in one fell swoop.
early 1990s
Japanese storage companies have reached their peak, with a market share of 80%. Under the sanctions imposed by Father America, they are unable to take care of themselves and their market share has shrunk sharply.
New players have emerged in the DRAM memory chip market, including Samsung, Hynix and Atlantic Jinko, as well as some Taiwan-funded small and medium-sized manufacturers.
at this time
Atlantic Jinko took advantage of the situation to enter the market and take advantage of the short market cycle to obtain huge profits, maintain the company's fission-type growth rate, and quickly occupy more market shares.
Wang Yaocheng seized the historic opportunity and developed rapidly.
Opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared and those who peek at the cards.
Atlantic Jinko seized the opportunity of the Southeast Asian financial crisis in 1997 and spent huge sums of money to acquire Hynix Semiconductor, a powerful company in the DRAM chip market.
In one fell swoop, it overtook its competitors and became the new leader in the DRAM chip market, posing a strong challenge to Japanese and Korean storage companies.
Since then, the market has entered an era dominated by Atlantic Jinko.
Taking the Asian financial crisis period in 1997 as the dividing point;
before the crisis
The world's DRAM chip market reached 26.2 billion U.S. dollars, but fell to 10.7 billion U.S. dollars after the crisis broke out.
This bloody market scale has been maintained for a long time under the impact of Atlantic Jinko's massive low-price products. Almost the entire industry has suffered serious losses, without exception.
Eventually, Hynix, a major player in the DRAM chip market, went bankrupt and liquidated, and was acquired by the former.
From 1999 to March 2000, the world DRAM chip market rebounded significantly to a scale of US$41.1 billion.
The number of products increased by less than 30%, and the market size expanded by 384%, which is crazy.
Not long after the good days, disaster struck again.
After the Internet high-tech industry bubble burst in March 2000 and July 2002, DRAM chip manufacturers had a particularly difficult time.
Because Atlantic Jinko once again used price to slaughter the market, ruthlessly suppressing the market size below tens of billions of dollars.
At its lowest point, the global DRAM chip market was only US$8.7 billion.
The result is;
A large number of small and medium-sized chip manufacturers in Europe, America, and Asia have withdrawn from the competition. In the DRAM chip market, the number of manufacturers has dropped sharply from the peak of 47 manufacturers to nine manufacturers today.
After more than 20 years of development, there are only nine manufacturers left.
A long list of big companies that are famous all over the world have withdrawn from this bloody and cruel market, ending their dark and desperate struggle.
Samsung Electronics lost US$7.691 billion in 2000 alone. From 2001 to July, it suffered another massive loss of US$3.57 billion.
As a result, Samsung Semiconductor could not bear the huge losses and collapsed suddenly. It was swallowed up by its biggest competitor Hynix and completed its tragic journey.
Looking back at the bloody world DRAM chip market, the journey was filled with thrilling sword flashes and countless corpses fell, eventually forming an oligopoly market structure.
completely predictable
After entering an oligopoly structure, it is meaningless to engage in price wars.
Major companies will tacitly maintain price levels, jointly expand the market size, obtain stable and high profits, and make up for the losses suffered over the years.
Who are the other players in the market?
Micron is the only remaining company in the United States, Elpida is the only one in Fuso, Qimonda is the only one in Europe, Hynix is the only one on the Korean Peninsula, Promos Taiwan, Powerchip, Huaya and Nanya, plus the leading company Atlantic Jinko
, there are only nine players in total.
For the Wang Consortium, everything has settled.
All that remains is to continue to increase investment in technology, lead the competition in the research and development of large-capacity DRAM memory chips, and enjoy huge monopoly profits.
It won't be long before European manufacturers and Taiwan-funded manufacturers will be eliminated, and the market will enter the final stage of restructuring.
because
Technically speaking, there are only two ways to implement large-capacity DRAM memory chips;
Grooved and stacked.
These are two completely opposite technical paths. The stacked type relies on upward stacking to achieve greater capacity storage, and the trench type digs downward to achieve greater capacity storage.
Atlantic Jinko and Hynix belong to the world's mainstream stacked technology route. This is also the path that Samsung has taken in history, and has been proven by historical experience to be the only correct path.
The trenched technical route developed by Qimonda in Europe will become narrower and narrower going forward.
The chip is only that thick, and digging down is a dead end. Not only is it very difficult to achieve the goal of large-capacity storage, but it is also extremely difficult to develop and requires a lot of investment, almost several times that of the stacked type.
Soon, the stubborn donkey-like Qimonda will discover that he is a dead bird.
I went back to the road of stacked technology, and found that it had been blocked by overlapping patent pools, and I could only die in frustration and hardship.
Wang Yaocheng is not worried about Taiwan-funded manufacturers, because they do not have their own core technology and will inevitably be eliminated by historical development.
in this production area
Taiwan-funded manufacturers generally introduce Micron’s stacked chip technology and have almost no R&D capabilities of their own.
As for the Taiwanese manufacturers in the field of DRAM memory chips, there are actually four Taiwanese manufacturers left, accounting for almost half of the world. This is not because their technology is particularly good, but because they all have good fathers and strong government support behind them.
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The most important point is that because their production scale is small, their losses are relatively small.
The four factories combined have a total of five eight-inch wafer production lines, with a market share of only 5.07%. They can only follow the trend.
Behind these chip manufacturers are Taiwan's powerful large conglomerates, such as Formosa Plastics, Taipower, etc., which can give them continuous blood transfusions and hang on to their lives.
But what's the use?
It's nothing more than a separation a few years earlier and a few years later, but in the end it's a dead end.
The formation of an oligopoly in the world's DRAM memory chip market will bring about a huge money scene that will make everyone jealous.
Unfortunately, all this has happened to Samsung Electronics, which has been eliminated.
The latest acquisition of Samsung Semiconductor Division has been fully integrated into Hynix Semiconductor Business, making its DRAM chip and flash memory production capacity closely followed by Atlantic Jinko, ranking second in the world.
When Comrade Yukio Fuso Itamoto took office, he comprehensively integrated Hynix Semiconductor's overlapping organizations, personnel allocation, etc., reorganized, merged, and adjusted R&D projects. Those that needed to be discontinued, those that needed to be transferred were transferred, and those that needed to be integrated were integrated.
Hynix Semiconductor business was reorganized. The application chip production of Hynix Industrial Park in Malaysia was transferred to Atlantic Jinko. Hynix Semiconductor focused on the production of DRAM memory chips.
This kind of market positioning is similar to TSMC, which specializes in making one thing bigger and stronger.
TSMC specializes in the world's chip foundry field, while Hynix focuses on the production of DRAM memory chips. The business has become pure and pure, which is conducive to leveraging its scale advantage and becoming stronger and stronger in the market competition.
Wang Yaocheng still had a private thought in his heart;
Allowing its subsidiaries TSMC and Hynix to develop into highly partial specialists, limiting the development direction of their comprehensive chip providers.
Because this is what Atlantic Jinko has to do, and no one else is allowed to get involved, not even its own company.
now
The Royal Fund happily acquired Atlantic Jinko and Hynix, which ranked first and second in DRAM chip market share respectively. In this market that has reached 33.7 billion US dollars, they occupy 79.2% of the market share, reaching the peak of their lives.
Affected by the growth in global memory demand, the DRAM chip market will further expand and is expected to exceed US$40 billion by the end of 2002.
According to analysis, the market size is expected to reach 43 billion US dollars within the year, which is a promising financial situation.
This big piece of fat fell firmly into the pocket of the royal family fund.