SK Hynix Inc, the worlds second-largest maker of computer-memory chips, suspended operations at a factory in China after a fire.
The company is ascertaining if there are any casualties and investigating the cause of the fire, which occurred at a plant in Wuxi, China, Son Hee Young, a spokesman of Icheon, South Korea-based SK Hynix, said in an telephone interview. The fire, which started at 3:50 p.m. local time during deployment of equipment, was extinguished by 5:20 p.m., the company said in a statement today.
The factory makes dynamic random-access memory chips for mobile phones and personal computers.
SK Hynix, which supplies chips to global smartphone manufacturers including Apple Inc., said in July there was limited second-half supply growth for memory chips. Lower-end smartphones will drive demand for dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM, chips in the second half, it had said.
Hynix shares rose 0.7 percent to 28,650 won at the close in Seoul. The stock has gained 11 percent this year, compared with a 3.2 percent decline in the benchmark Kospi index.
With the latest estimates placing Hynix somewhere around 30% of the worlds DRAM production for Hynix to lose half its capacity in seconds is about as serious as it gets in the technology market.
High performance GDDR5 from these FABs is crucial to the production of nVidias fastest GeForce GTX cards, so if you were thinking about buying one then NOW might be the right time.
Our sources in the Far East have just told us that major memory brands have stopped shipping anything at all, until they know the full extent of the damage and how the markets will react.
This makes sense.
If you are a major memory brand and your warehouses in the Far East, Europe, USA etc are all packed full of product that was destined to be sold as the pre-explosion price, why wouldnt you wait a day or two to see just how far the memory price will jump?
Given the profiling information we have seen on Hynix so far, it seems as though the slower cheaper memory in the world will float up in price a little, while the performance product pricing will leap up like a leopard."
