Memory chip market poised to rebound in the mid-2013

(iTers News) - Sluggish PC demand is bedeviling global memory chip market, throwing a dark cloud on long-term viability of chip markets. Yet, Kwon Oh Chul, CEO with SK Hynix, Inc.still remains relatively optimistic about the long-haul prospects of memory chip market, pinning his hopes for recovery  on mobile devices like smart phones and tablet PCs.

“Current woes facing chip makers are structural, not cyclical. The industry is now going through its most crucial and painstaking inflection point where PCs are increasingly losing the growth dynamics to mobile devices,” said he at a press conference held in Seoul to celebrate the Day of Semiconductors. .

“The memory bit load per system or box is still 500MB to 1GB on average, compared with an average bit load of 4GB for a PC, but once its average bit growth hit 30% in the way that PCs had done in their hey days of late 1990s, it’s a matter of time before mobile devices would outgrowth PCs as the biggest memory guzzler,” stressed he.

“As you see, demand for smart mobile devices is exploding with the shipments of smatphones and tablet PCs topping 600 to 700 million units and 100 million units, respectively, by year-end. Collective shipments of PCs and netbooks are in the neighborhood of 350 million units, however. I have a strong belief that mobile devices will lead a next growth curve of memory chip make to take up slacks in demand from PC markets, but I am not sure when they will cannibalize PC demand , ” added he.

To keep up with this paradigm shift, SK Hynix is concentrating much of its fabrication capacity on production of more lucrative mobile DRAM and NAND flash memory chips, remaking itself as mobile memory chip maker. All of Hynix NAND flash chip production are bound for smart mobile device markets, and more than 30% of DRAM output also are destined for mobile device markets, leading the chipmaker to generate only 20% of its revenues from PC markets.

Looking forward, he still remains uncertain about where the industry will be heading for in 2013, as macro-economic uncertainties are forcing consumers to digging deeper into their pockets.

As smart mobile devices will be in high demand, and years-long freezes on capital spending and increasingly tough technical challenge in the migration to new design rule are combining to curb chip production, he hopes market should start to bounce back in mid-2013.