Inotera reports loss, cuts PC DRAM output

By Lorraine Luk

TAIPEI--Taiwan's Inotera Memories Inc.'s third-quarter net loss narrowed from a year earlier, the company said in a statement Wednesday. However, the loss was still below the street's estimates as slack personal-computer demand and rising costs related to technology migration continued to weigh on the PC memory chip maker.

Inotera, a joint venture between Taiwan's Nanya Technology Corp. and U.S.-based Micron Technology Inc. , said sluggish demand has prompted the company to cut its output of DRAM chips, used in PCs, since earlier this month. But it declined to say how much capacity has been idled since.

Inotera said net loss for the three months ended Sept. 30 narrowed to 4.39 billion New Taiwan dollars (US$150 million) from NT$7.02 billion. It was worse than the average forecast of a NT$3.00 billion net loss by Factset.
Inotera said third-quarter revenue fell 2.8% to NT$8.69 billion from NT$8.94 billion.

Global PC demand remains weak due to competition from mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones and inventory reduction of old PCs ahead of the new launch of Microsoft Corp.'s new operating system, Windows 8.

Global PC shipments fell 8.3% in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to market research firm Gartner, with the global economic slowdown weighing on both consumer and corporate PC demand.