Micron’s First Solid-State Drive on Allocation for OEM Clients

Micron Technology’s first solid-state drive (SSD) is on allocation for OEM customers, and the first products available sold out on the company’s Crucial.com retail website, Mark Adams, the company’s vice president of sales, said Wednesday on a quarterly earnings call.

C300 RealSSDs began shipping to OEMs this year and went on sale at Crucial.com Feb. 22. Crucial.com sold out RealSSDs within two business days of receiving its first shipments, Adams said. It has since received fresh supply, company officials said. Micron is short of supply of the NAND memory for the C300 and “doesn’t have a good picture” of when it will catch up with demand, Adams said.

Despite tight supply, a 2.5-inch version of the 256-GB C300 RealSSD was being promoted Thursday with a $100 price cut at $699 on Crucial.com. The 128-GB model was selling for $449 after a $50 discount. RealSSDs use 34-nanometer flash memory from Micron’s IM Flash Technologies joint venture with Intel, which also is selling 1.8- and 2.5-inch 80 GB X25-M SSDs. Amazon was carrying Intel’s X-25 M Thursday at $224, down from its $269 list. RealSSD is capable of maximum 355/215 Mbps read/write speeds, requiring the use of a 6Gbps SATA interface on a motherboard. RealSSD also is available with a 1.8-inch drive. It uses a Marvell controller and internally developed custom firmware, company officials have said.

Meanwhile, Micron reorganized its FLCoS microdisplay business, which it bought from Displaytech last year. A new general manager from within Micron replaced Displaytech Marketing Director Bruce Spenner, who moved to the memory systems division. A Micron spokeswoman confirmed the change but wouldn’t identify the new general manager. Micron remains committed to the microdisplay business and continues to seek a OEM to build light engines for its FLCoS panels, the spokeswoman said. Micron previously combined its 0.37-inch FLCoS microdisplays with a 3M light engine that was at the heart of 3M’s MPro120 micro-projector as well as those sold by Aiptek and CenturyTech. By designing its own light engines, Micron will be freed of production limitations and can meet demand for a single module supplier combining a microdisplay and light engine, company officials have said (CED Nov 19 p1). Micron hasn’t disclosed which of its microdisplays will be paired with a new light engine. The microdisplay business, part of Micron’s silicon and systems group, remains based in Longmont, Colo.

Micron swung to a $365 million Q2 profit from a $763 million loss a year earlier as revenue soared to $1.96 billion from $993 million amid a rise in average selling prices for DRAM memory. Micron’s DRAM revenue rose 24 percent from Q1 on a 17 percent jump in unit sales. DRAM ASPs improved 7 percent on increased revenue from double-data rate-3 (DDR3) products, company officials said. DDR3 bit shipments rose 28 percent from the previous quarter, Adams said. DDR3 accounted for 45 percent of Micron’s Q2 DRAM revenue, up from 40 percent in Q1, he said. DDR-2 bit shipments also rose as ASPs increased to $3 from $2 in late January, company officials said.

NAND memory unit sales declined from Q1 as ASPs decreased “slightly,” Micron said. NAND revenue was up 32 percent from a year earlier, largely from increased production using the 34-nanometer process, Chief Financial Officer Ron Foster said. Gross margins rose to $642 million from a negative $267 million a year ago. Micron took a $234 million charge a year ago to write down the value of DRAM and NAND flash memory products. It also incurred a $105 million charge as it shut down 200mm wafer manufacturing at its Boise, Idaho, plant. Micron’s Q2 earnings benefited from $11 million that the company received from the federal government from anti-dumping tariffs. The company’s inventory rose slightly to $1.07 billion from $1.03 billion Sept. 3. Its debt declined to $1.99 billion from $2.37 billion. Micron’s inventory was five weeks at the end of Q2, up from the normal three to four weeks, Adams said. It incurred a $29 million loss on the sale of semiconductor equipment, Micron said.

Micron is nearing the first production of NAND memory using a 25-nanometer process, Foster said. The company began the first qualifications for the 25-nanometer with Lexar OEM customers, the first of which is expected to ship product this quarter, Adams said. Inotera, 30 percent-owned by Micron, also will start production in Q3 of a 50-nanometer stack product, Foster said. Micron invested $138 million in stock that Inotera sold in Q2, Foster said.