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Why the Intel & ST JV hasn’t happened yet |
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May 11, 2007 at 12:38 PM |
I am standing by my recent blog that the Intel/STM merger of NOR flash and related loose ends is going to happen but I, like ‘some observers,' was a little baffled that ST didn't announce the deal yesterday at an analyst conference in New York.
After some media and financial analyst reports this month as well as a barrage of questions from analysts at STM's recent quarterly conference call, the word from STM is MUM!
However, the body language is rather different and is comparable to STM waving a red flag at a bull!
It will all be sorted very soon but why has it taken so long?
It's due to Hynix.
The succession of top management at Hynix, though made public, has behind the scenes caused the slowing-down of the decision-making machine at just the wrong time. Now that a new leader has been put in place, decisions are being made.
This has not only affected the NOR flash business dealings in the ivory tower but has hit the grassroots tool delivery dates at equipment suppliers this last quarter. Now you know where the push-outs came from!
As Peter Clarke reported today over at EETimes, ST has had to include the issues at its JV 300mm fab with Hynix into the mix with Intel. Though the story doesn't broach the question, Intel badly needs 300mm capacity for NOR flash production. The Wuxi fab would be ideal while STM's M6 fab will take time to fit out.
Hynix on the other hand wanted to continue the aggressive ramp of DRAM to meet the demand of customers in China. The split in production being requested goes against that idea.
As you can probably guess, the timing for Hynix has not been good but things should be sorted soon!
On a slightly different note, it was interesting to read Peter's story about the rumors of this ongoing affair yesterday, with the added note that Hynix was touted by ‘some observers' as now being embroiled in the debate!
Read it here:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle
The reason why I mention this is that that came from us and no other public source!
The new story from Peter, linked below, ties in Hynix, but we already knew that!
Hopefully one day, not too far into the future, EETimes may link to one of our stories like we do with theirs and drop using ‘some observers' to describe us!
That point was highlighted to me by an astute professional PR person (yes, there is more than one out there as I have previously commented) who rang me last night to tell me that it wasn't him that pointed out the issue over press releases being dumbed down due to the great expansion in websites run by algorithms.
Anyway, Peter's new story on the matter can be viewed here:
http://www.eetimes.com/news/semi/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199500958
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