NAND flash prices are expected to fall less than 10% sequentially in the second quarter of 2019, and will likely stop falling later this year, according to industry sources.

Taiwan-based Nanya Technology has cut its capex outlook this year to approximately NT$7 billion (US$226.8 million) from the previously-set NT$10.6 billion. The downward revision was made when the DRAM chipmaker reported revenue and profit declines for the first quarter.

Samsung Electronics increased its lead as the No. 1 semiconductor vendor due to the booming DRAM market in 2018, according to Gartner. However, the memory chip giant is likely to slip to second position in 2019.

DRAM chipmaker Nanya Technology is likely to report an eight-quarter low in net income for the first quarter of 2019, according to a report by Taiwan's Central News Agency.

Unclear product positioning and customer orders will likely leave a substantial portion of production capacity idle in China's IC foundry sector, where more 12- and 8-inch fabs are set to come online, according to industry sources.

Worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment surged 14% from US$56.62 billion in 2017 to an all-time high of US$64.5 billion in 2018, according to SEMI.

Memory module firms Adata Technology and Team Group have both reported sequential increases in March consolidated revenues of about 11% and 28%, respectively.

Samsung Electronics uses mainly 18nm process technology to manufacture server DRAM chips, and is gearing up for transition to a newer 16nm process node in 2020, according to Digitimes Research.

The memory-chip market conditions will start to improve later in 2019, followed by several years of prosperity, according to Sumit Sadana, executive VP and chief business officer at Micron Technology.

Winbond Electronics and Macronix International have reported sequential increases in March consolidated revenues of nearly 14% and 8.8%, respectively.

DRAM ASPs are forecast to fall 15-20% sequentially in the second quarter of 2019, and drop another 10% in the third quarter, according to DRAMeXchange.

The global semiconductor materials market grew 10.6% in 2018, propelling semiconductor materials revenues to US$51.9 billion to eclipse the previous high of US$47.1 billion set in 2011, according to SEMI.

Worldwide sales of semiconductors registered another sequential and on-year decreases in February 2019.

Memory market demand is expected to pick up in the second half of 2019, according to Miin Wu, chairman for flash memory and mask ROM chipmaker Macronix International.

Recent concerns over market conditions, coupled with a sharp downturn in average selling prices, will lead the DRAM market to reach just US$77 billion in 2019 - a 22% year-over-year decline. Falling prices and weak demand will likely continue through the third quarter of 2019, according to IHS Marki...

With memory demand for automotive set to grow robustly, Micron Technology is gearing up for the market boom by accelerating its deployments of related products and technologies, according to company executive VP and chief business officer Sumit Sadana.

Taiwan-based chipmakers are mostly engaged in the non-memory semiconductor market, where demand is expected to start recovering gradually in the second quarter of 2019, according to Mark Liu, chairman for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC).

China's Yangtze Memory Technology (YMTC) is set to kick off volume production of 64-layer 3D NAND flash chips by the end of 2019 as scheduled, despite prices for such memory products continuing sliding down. The move will help YMTC narrow its technology gap with global leaders to two years, and may...

Taiwan-based memory module maker Team Group will be aggressively expanding sales of its high-margin gaming and industrial products to enhance further its profitability in 2019, according to company chairman Danny Hsia.

Billings among North American manufacturers of semiconductor production equipment posted a year-over-year decline for the fourth consecutive month in February.

Driven by sharp price falls for NAND flash chips, global shipments of SSDs are estimated to surge 20-25% in 2019 from 200 million units seen in 2018, and PCIe SSDs are expected to emerge as a new mainstream offering by the end of 2019 with a market share of 50% on a par with SATA SSDs, according to...

Micron Technology has unveiled plans to idle up to 5% of DRAM wafer starts and also reduce its total NAND flash wafer starts by 5% in 2019, while expressing caution about sales performance in its third quarter of fiscal 2019.

NAND flash prices continue to fall dragging down SSD prices further, which will be driving the adoption of SSDs in enterprise and datacenter applications, according to industry observers.

Global semiconductor production value may end its three-year growth streak in 2019, due partly to memory market demand likely to shrink in the year from 2018 and partly to global economic uncertainties resulting from the US-China trade war, according to Digitimes Research.

Memory module firm Adata Technology has reported net losses of NT$0.82 (US$0.03) per share for 2018, due mainly to losses in inventory value arising from DRAM and NAND flash price drops.