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The Spansion Expansion

Looking at the NOR market you have: (1) Spansion, (2) Intel, (3) ST Microelectronics, and (4) Samsung. While its not certain how Samsung is faring, its a well known fact that Spansion, Intel, and ST Microelectronics are all losing tons of money on NOR. Intel said it missed its earnings by $0.02 due to $0.025 loss related to NOR. If you compare quarterly loss rate, Spansion is lossing about $65M while Intel lost like $250M. Intel and STM are sick of the losses so they are getting rid of these two companies. Spansion has been separated from AMD for years; when Numonyx is formed it will also have to fend for itself. There will a mutual understanding among these two new spin-offs that prices have to rise. Samsung is a wildcard with its NAND-based fusion memory OneNAND. It looks like Samsung got some good NOR penetration in Q1/Q2, but this reached steady state in Q3/Q4. We need some sane pricing in the NOR market and I think that will come soon. Spansion/Intel/ST Microelectronics (NOR) are all under water, but Spansion is more efficient and will break the water first once prices start to rise.