During his keynote presentation at the MemCon 2008 conference, Denali Software analyst Lane Mason summed up the $58 billion memory market in just one word: Stinks!

"The years 2004-06 were good for the memory (both Flash and DRAM) makers. 2007 was a 'fair' year. 2008, stinks and next year will be probably good".

The Denali analyst expect more bad financial news coming from all the memory makers as time goes by: it's going to get worse before it gets better... next year.

Flash memory dominates the memory market as a whole. Flash memory makers are expected to invest (in new equipments, technologies, processes...) $13 billion this year for a market that Mason estimates at $15 billion! How can anyone make money in Flash, the analyst asked. Well... they don't! They can't!

Intel bet on Solid State Drive (SSD) market is last effort before final exit

For Mason, Intel is betting on the SSD market big time with its state of the art manufacturing capabilities (34 nm). It could work, the analyst said. But if it fails, that would be Intel's last salvo at this.

Here are some other trends that stand out from Mason's keynote:

- The PC DRAM roadmap is stalled. It's been a year now and most of the PC makers are still not pushing fast DDR3 memories (twice as fast as DDR2). And it will take another year to see it moving into the mainstream;

- Low Power DRAM is not happening. Mason noted that there are still no laptops out there using LP DRAM!

- Taiwan Inc. is not yet a powerful force in the Flash memory market, like it is in the DRAM market. But it's just a matter of time before it becomes a significant player in Flash;

- Nymonyx and Spansion share NOR Flash market that is 1/2 the size of the NAND Flash market. But both makers are cash strapped.



Denali analyst talk summary: