Market research company Semico has forecast a continuing decline in the DRAM market with the only light at the end of the tunnel being a demand for higher density DIMMs. The company said that revenues will decline by 19 per cent in 1998 and amount to $14 billion. But because of the lower average selling prices, the average size of memory in a PC increased. Semico said that the pressure on prices, coupled with over production, meant that the number of players will decline, with dropouts exceeding new entrants into the market. That is because startup costs for DRAM plants are very high. The other reason, Semico said, was that producing PC100-compliant modules requires design expertise, assembly expertise and exacting performance test capabilities. The report said that Samsung and Kingston were number one and number two in the worldwide market. The report coincides with other marketing information which suggests that the sweet spot, if there is one under the currently sour market conditions, is in high performance synchronous DRAM modules. ®