Vanguard shuns DRAM biz

Vanguard, the Taiwanese DRAM producer, is to stop making own-brand products, the company confirmed today.

Spokesman Jay Tsai told Bloomberg that the company will "look for a niche" as a chip foundry.

Taiwan Semiconductor, the world's biggest chip foundry and an investor in Vanguard, has transferred production of logic chips to the company, he said.

For the first nine months of 2001, Vanguard produced a cumulative net loss of NT$4,954m (US$144m) on sales of NT$7,710m, compared with a net profit of NT$2bn for the same period in 2000.

Set up in 1994, Vanguard is, or was, regarded as a strong second-tier DRAM maker. The sustained fall in DRAM prices this year has torpedoed this assumption - there are no such thing as strong second-tier players any more. ®