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The memory industry has had an unusually volatile time over the last 15 months, and memory manufacturers are paying the price. Even though the company posted a much better than expected forecast for the coming quarter, fears of declining SanDisk flash memory prices – and industry-wide declines – have sent many investors cowering.

The rise and fall

Over the past year, Sandisk’s share price rose a healthy 70 per cent due to stability in the prices of flash memory, coupled with a sharp rise in the sales of smartphones and tablets – where flash memory is used most. The company would then get brutalized this past week with Reuters reporting the company’s share price shed 9.9 per cent of its value after the company reported that gross margins for its fourth quarter results fell short of analyst’s expectations.

It’s all in the margins.

Analysts were expecting median gross margins of 45.2 per cent, but Sandisk only delivered gross margins of 43.7 per cent. What that means is that the profits the company is able to eek out from each sale is falling, attributable either to rising input costs or falling retail prices. In the memory industry’s case, it is the latter.

In fact, the price of memory dropped a steep 15 per cent in the fourth quarter, which means if you’re looking for a good deal on flash sticks, and other forms of flash memory, now is as good time to buy!

Why we agonise over financials

Not all tech readers care much for a company’s financial results. Nevertheless it’s important to take note of them due to the impact they have on the prices of components and products. If the price of Sandisk flash memory is expected to drop, while it may hurt the company, it is certainly a benefit to consumers looking to nab good deals. If you time it well, you get to capitalize heavily.

Photo: j Wiltshire / Flickr

The DRAM industry has been going through a topsy-turvy period to say the least. In 2010, industry sentiment went from rosy due to excess demand, to less cheerful due to falling demand leading to oversupply. The latter of the two trends has carried into 2011, resulting in DRAMeXchange reporting that the price of memory is at a year-long low.

Buy now

Ivan Lin, editor and publicist at DRAMeXchange, says (via PCWorld) that the average price of commodity 1GB DDR3 DRAM has fallen to $0.84 per unit. This is a stark difference from the historic highs found in April and May last year, when the price was $2.80 per unit. This figure is the lowest DRAM has been since March 2009, when prices hovered around $0.81 per chip.

Oversupply began in December

According to Lin, the period of oversupply occurred during the tail-end of December, where the Western world’s shopping season slowed. However, major manufacturers, including Powerchip Semiconductor, Elpida Memory and Samsung Electronics continued to churn out chips so that they could stay competitive.

What’s particularly humorous about this cycle of oversupply is it was prefaced with a warning from DRAMeXchange competitor, iSuppli, that their may be a shortage of RAM due to factories moving over to newer manufacturing technology. It’s really just more evidence that of all the components in computing, memory supply is still one of the most volatile and most susceptible to sharp price increases and drops.

Buy, buy, buy!

When the commodity price of 1GB DDR3 DRAM is at historic lows, that price drop is often passed right along the supply chain to the consumer. This means if you’ve been in the market, it’s time to buy DDR3 RAM, before prices return to normal.

Out of interest, do you time your purchasing of DDR3 DRAM to when the component is at its cheapest, or do you just purchase as the need arises?

A member of the HP G60 family series, Hewlett-Packard’s HP G60-100EM is a notebook processor with a clock speed 1,900 Mhz and RAM: 2,048 MB. It has a Hard Disk Memory of 120 GB. Flashy and high performing, it offers a maximum memory of 4GB while there are 2 memory slots. It has 15.6″ WXGA display screen with a resolution of 1280×800. The Graphics Card is nVidia GeForce 8200M while the operating system is Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium. For people whose work is related to graphic designing, advertising or multimedia, HP G60-100EM is comes equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce 8200 graphics which brings objects to life. The visual results are superb and gamers are sure to appreciate awesome graphics of this machine. Offering the latest technology, HP G60-100EM has DVD Super Multi Double Layer for its Optical Disc Drives. It is the perfect accessory for professionals who require access to DVD to get access to important information while on the move. Enabled with Modem, LAN 10/100 and Wireless LAN, the notebook has ample power behind its attractive appearance. An integrated webcam and 3 USB ports are other features of this efficient notebook.

It weighs 2.75kg and is equipped with the top of the range AMD launched Athlon X2 Dual Core processor that runs at 1.9GHz. With such a processor, the Hewlett-Packard HP G60-100EM (FT291EA#ABU) model is sure to increase productivity and offer smooth and fast working. Its Athlon X2 Dual Core processor is capable of multi-tasking and allows users to switch between programmes quickly without any processing pauses. The 2 GB of RAM is generous and allows the Hewlett Packard machine to run multiple applications without any disturbance while the 120 GB hard disk is huge enough to store music data, media and plenty of documents.

Micron Technology has unveiled a new and unique memory technology for mobile computing applications. The company has developed the low power DDR2 memory technology jointly with the Nanya Technology Corporation. The low power DDR2 or LPDDR2 is aimed at enhancing the battery life by consuming much less power. It will also incredibly enhance the computing speed and optimise the performance of traditional handsets, smartphones and popular mobile internet devices (MIDs).

Most of the mobile devices run on LPDDR1 technology as of now. The LPDDR1 operates at 1.8 volts.  Today, the mobile computing device makers are offering nearly every sophisticated technology available in a diminutive handheld form factor. This makes the device more power hungry and it demands more powerful resources to offer good operational speed. Thus, the development of the LPDDR2 memory was a necessity instead of being a luxury benchmark. LPDDR2 memories operate at 1.2 volts and reduce the device’s power consumption by 50 percent from ordinary DDR2 memory like the GEIL Black Dragon 4GB DDR2 kit. It can support data transfer speeds up to 1066Mb per second. The LPDDR2 will enable true multi-tasking in mobile computing devices too.

Eric Spanneut, director of mobile memory marketing for Micron commented, “There are two primary design aspects that mobile handset designers look for in memory – fast speeds to boost operating capability and low power to maintain battery life. We’re able to exceed designers’ expectations with our portfolio of high-performance mobile LPDDR2 memory solutions, providing the lowest power option available, as well as blazing fast data transfer speeds.”

Tags for this article: mobile, memory

Numonyx, a company formed as a result of joint venture between Intel and STMicroelectronics, has unveiled its new line-up of flash memory devices for consumer electronics such as mobile phones, USB drives, digital cameras, MP3 players and much more. The company has manufactured the Multi Level Cell chips using its latest 41-nanometer manufacturing process. These chips can be used in Solid State hard drives (SSDs), multimedia cards, memory cards and microSD flash memory cards. These MLCs are available in 16 and 32 GB capacities.

As the demand for smartphones and other portable computing devices increases, it becomes necessary to come up with high performance chips. Embedded MultiMediaCards or MMCs, like the Integral MMC 1 GB, and microSD cards are used in most of the portable devices. Numonyx has targeted its new MMCs for use in mobile phones, GPS navigators and set-top boxes and its microSD MLCs will be used in mobiles, cameras, cam-coders and similar devices. Numonyx’s MMCs are available in capacities ranging from 2GB to 32GB and the micro SD ranges between 2GB to 8GB. The company said that the samples of the new product line-up will be launched in January for device manufacturers. Hopefully, the new NAND flash memory devices will be far better than the existing ones.

Tags for this article: intel, memory, flash

Taking photos via digital camera and getting them stored on to a memory card is real fun, but it becomes a headache when you have to transfer them to your PC. Even though it’s not a big deal to plug in a USB cable and transfer the files, but still it’s something that you have to remember and do whenever you get new stuff.

But now the task of data transfer from digital camera to PC can be automated. All you need to do is get an Eye-Fi Wireless SD-card for your camera and configure it to your needs. Once configured and installed in the camera, it will automatically download the photos to your PC or photo site (depending on the configuration). For this you have to connect to a home network or any Wayport hotspot and the Eye-Fi will automatically synchronise the data stored in the camera with the one stored on your computer.

The Eye-Fi offers a storage capacity of 2 GB, which means you can capture thousands of images. The only issue with this card is it that it’s highly priced. It costs around £30 more than a normal card of the same capacity. So if you are a regular traveller and don’t want to keep opening your laptop every now and then to download the images then the Eye-Fi is for you. But if most of the time you love to sit at home then try considering some other normal high capacity card available at an equivalent cost.

Tags for this article: wireless, memory, camera

Patriot Memory has pushed the boundaries of portable storage by launching its new Xporter Magnum USB pen drive under its Extreme Performance Line which offers 64 GB of storage space. This pen drive is sufficient for carrying a tremendous amount of data in your pocket. It can hold around 13,000 soundtracks or you can carry fifteen 720p HD movies along with you without any hassles. No other flash drive on the market offers such a huge amount of storage as of now.

Performance wise, the Xporter Magnum USB pen drive is not disappointing. It is configured as a dual channel drive which uses Multi Level Cell (MLC) flash memory. The storage capacity of the pen drive is definitely its highlight, as it is over twice as large as even the company’s other huge USB stick, the Patriot Xporter XT Boost 32GB. Although the Multi Level Cell flash is slower than the Single Level Cell (SLC) flash memory (especially during writing the data), the Xporter Magnum USB pen drive guarantees a read speed of up to 210x, i.e. around 31MB/s. Such a read speed is excellent when it is offered by a 64 GB of flash drive. After all, what’s the use of a pen drive that offers faster read speeds but can accommodate only 4, 8, 12 or 32 GB of data.

Coming to the design, the Xporter Magnum USB pen drive features a compact form factor and can be easily carried along by the user.

The Memory Stick Micro M2 is a viable solution for increasing the storage needs of the latest innovative mobile devices. The M2 memory stick can be used with mobile phones, as well as products compatible with the Memory Stick PRO, because of its dual-voltage feature. The small but potent card can go well with all the Memory Stick PRO products that operate at 3.3 volts. The ultra small card is also compatible with the Sony Playstation 3 and most Sony Ericsson mobile phones. Moreover, you will also get an adapter with the M2 that can be utilized with the memory stick slots.

You can depend on the M2 to transfer the data with speed and accuracy by simply inserting it into the adapter. The versatile memory stick card is as small as one-quarter of the PRO Duo, with a thickness of 1.2mm and weight of 1 gram (approx.). To be more specific, it is 12.5 x 15 x 1.2 mm in terms of dimension and provides a minimum write speed of 15 Mbps. You can trust the memory stick micro M2 for perfect functioning in the temperatures ranging from -25C to 85C.

If you own one of the Sony Ericsson phones (compatible with M2), then memory stick M2 is the ideal way of enhancing the scope of your device. So check out the compatibility list to see if you can avail the benefits of the valuable M2.

SanDisk, a renowned company known worldwide for its flash memory products, has launched a new array of premium memory cards for mobile phones. The newbies are named SanDisk Mobile Ultra, microSD, microSDHC and Memory Stick Micro (M2).

These memory cards are especially optimized for fast data transfer and large storage capacity. They are available in 2 GB, 4 GB and 8GB models and are considered as a necessary mobile accessory for those who access digital media on their phones a lot. Some, like the Sandisk microSD Mobile Ultra 8 GB, also include their own USB attachment so a they can be plugged into computers without card readers. These cards offer the users accelerated data transfers and are provided with a MobileMate Micro Reader that can be easily plugged into USB 2.0 interfaces and can be used for easy management of the files.

Michael Romero, vice president, mobile retail business, SanDisk said, “SanDisk’s new Mobile Ultra line will make consumer’s digital lifestyle more manageable by offering them greater ability to quickly transfer photos, maps, music, videos, games and other large file size content wherever they go. These cards are truly the most convenient way for people to store, move and play content using their mobile phones, so we are excited to introduce this high-performance, premium product to market to meet this need and growing demand.”

The 8 GB memory card allows the consumers to store 1000 songs, 1200 photos and 21 hours of video which is more than enough for pro mobile entertainment freaks.

It is a known fact that memory is an integral part of a computer and in its absence; it would be similar to a human body without a brain. But the body becomes weak and starts disintegrating when the memory crumbles. So the best and most efficient way to bolster the performance of your computer is to use the PC2-5300 memory by Lenovo which comes with fast double data rate which offers a transfer rate of up to 5300MB per second. This will increase your computer’s performance manifold with stress on applications like steaming video, CAD programmes and graphics. The memory adds more power to the system and is one of the least expensive available in the market. It helps in enhancing the overall performance of the notebook and strikes compatibility with all the models of the Y-series.

The PC2-5300 DDR2 memory makes use of the latest technology which helps it in performing five times more efficiently in comparison to the conventional SDRAM. Lenovo has also ensured that the memory is compatible with all the notebook systems that it has launched, especially the Y-Series. Lenovo has taken care of all the memory requirements and has reviewed the quality of the manufacturing process throughout the world. With the Lenovo 4GB DDR2 PC2-5300, the Y-Series also goes up to 4GB of RAM. The memory is also supported by a warranty by the company along with service and technical support provided by IBM. So if you feel like giving your computer that extra push for storing and running applications, you can count on the Y-Series PC2-5300 SDRAM Memory.