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Curiouser and curiouser (and even curiouser)
06 March 2008 | By Mark Osborne | Editor's Blog
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Three bits of news released this week raised more questions than gave answers, enough to remind me that curiosity killed the cat.
Eric Savitz over at Barrons was very curious over Intel’s announcement that its margins for its next quarter would be impacted by the worse-than-expected price declines in NAND flash memory. Kravitz bothered to post responses from financial analysts that cover the company due to the fact that some of them didn’t buy into Intel’s reasoning.Christopher Danely of J.P. Morgan was quoted as saying that, “NAND flash is only 3% of total Intel revenue…for Intel’s gross margins to decline 2% in Q1, COGS would have to increase $192 million, which is more than half of the company’s total NAND revenue and would drop NAND gross margins from 20% to -47% in only one quarter…we believe Intel’s microprocessor business is below expectations from excess microprocessor inventory in the channel and deteriorating PC demand.”
We all know that NAND is under ridiculous pricing pressure, so why should Intel be surprised about this? Why would it single out NAND when it’s also obvious that the technology makes up such a small percentage of revenues? Curious indeed.
The second curious concoction is over the announced partnership between Micron and Nanya. Where does that leave Qimonda and Inotera? Neither company has really stuck their heads out of the bunkers to answer those questions yet. Digitimes, amongst others, found the whole thing very curious, and highlighted that Qimonda and Inotera may not yet actually know what to do.
The French mainstream press seem to be gunning for STMicroelectronics boss, Carlo Bozotti, after the French Government bought a stake in the company. ST publicly denied rumors in the French press that Bozotti was for the chop. The whole affair is rather strange and EETimes found the story very curious.
That’s at least three curiosities in one short week, a week that still has two days to run. Those cats are sure using up their nine lives very fast.