China wafer foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) has announced to stop its OEM service of DRAM from this month. The capacity per month of the company has occupied 1.5%~2% of total capacity in the global DRAM chip market. Although some market producers expect SMIC’s quit to help sustain the price, PSC spokesman Eric Tan noted that as the market share of SMIC is low, so its decision to stop producing DRAM can only pose limited assistance for the market’s recovery.

Currently, the market is facing with the biggest difficulty, PSC chairman Frank Huang expressed that industry makers that can survive in this wave of hardship will be very healthy in the future development. However those companies can not overcome the difficulty will be confronted with more problems. SMIC is the first industry maker to give up and surrender. PSC spokesman Eric Tan pointed out that the quit of SMIC is of course good for the general market, however, as its market share in DRAM part is not high, so whether the market will improve obviously or not is still unknown.

The foundry service for Elpida and Qimonda in Shanghai and Beijing respectively had occupied 23.6% of SMIC’s revenue.

After SMIC quit DRAM market, it will possibly shift to NAND flash, posing another pressure to the NAND flash market.

Frank Huang implied that in the tough, competitive market environment, cooperation and alignment seemed to be the best way to survive and keep vigorous.