“The memory market made a big comeback, fueled by the revival in DRAM, which grew 46 percent in 1999, and the shortage of flash capacity,” said Joe D’Elia, director of Dataquest’s European Semiconductor Research. He added the shortage of capacity for flash memory, used in products such as cell phones and personal Internet access devices, became apparent early last year. To combat the problem, manufacturers tried to add capacity by converting older DRAM and logic facilities to augment their meager flash capacities.

By Lisa Nadile