Mosel Vitelic (Hsinchu, Taiwan) has a DRAM-making subsidiary, ProMOS Technologies Inc. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) but Mosel Vitelic itself is set to end production of DRAMs in the first half of this year. Solar cell production is expected to be ramped up and become Mosel Vitelic’s main business in Q4 2007. Until then the company will act as a foundry for LCD driver and power management ICs, the reports said.

Mosel Vitelic began as two separate memory making companies in 1987 which then merged. The combined entity is the main shareholder in ProMOS Technologies Inc., a DRAM maker which was begun as a joint venture with Infineon Technologies AG (Munich, Germany).

Infineon and ProMOS finally settled a long running dispute over licensing in November 2004 with a deal that was set to see the Taiwan-based memory maker pay Infineon licensing fees of $156 million over the period to April 2006. Those fees were agreed to allow ProMOS to make DRAMs using Infineon technology at the 170- 140- and 110-nanometer manufacturing nodes.

Mosel Vitelic now claims it decided to pull out of DRAM making in 2003 and that the build up of ProMOS was a strategy to implement the move. “The company will be exploiting its analog ICs foundry business and R&D capabilities,” the company’s Web site said, on a forward looking note.

The DRAM market has been an extremely difficult one in recent years with South Korean vendors Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Hynix Semiconductor Inc., apparently determined to maintain leading market shares.

Mosel is following its erstwhile partner and adversary Infineon in getting out of the DRAM business. Infineon recently opened Qimonda AG as a wholly-owned subsidiary company to take responsibility for memory chip production and intends to sell the company to investors.

By: DocMemory
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