Summary
1. The NOR market is a money loser, no matter who the players are. 2. If Numonyx, (Intel + STMicroelectronics), was such a great money making proposition it would have been funded months ago. 3. The financial world is well aware that the last big NOR Flash venture between AMD and Fujitsu, Spansion, resulted in a public company that to date has never ever made a profit.
Analysis
At the end of December 2007 the news was "Amid turmoil in the debt capital markets, Intel, Francisco Partners and STMicroelectronics have delayed the closing of Numonyx, its joint flash memory venture, to March 28, 2008."
Wait a minute. Is there an elephant in the room? Could it be that gross margins in the NOR Flash market are so poor that all players are losing money? Could it be that there is too much NOR Flash capacity? Could it be that about 67% of all NOR Flash sold is consumed by cell phone manufacturers?
Could it be that NAND Flash is pushing NOR Flash out of cell phones? Could it be the relentless NOR Flash price pressure from the big 5 cell phone manufacturers? Could it be a price war that was instigated by Samsung because it wants to be number 1 in NOR Flash before 2010?
Could it be the big mobile network operators' price pressure on the cell phone manufacturers? Or is it the pressure coming from worldwide demand for lower price cell phones? Is it the credit crunch?
No, these are all of the elephants in the room. Smart money did not get that way by investing in money losing markets.
