OCZ Technology Discontinues Memory Module Business

[nekrosoft13]

OCZ technology has officially announced that it would discontinue its DRAM module products by the end of February 28.

The announcement follows the company's move to discontinue certain unprofitable commodity memory module products last August, with the intent to continue only with certain high-performance memory products. However, since that time, there has been continued weakness in the global DRAM markets. As a result, the company will withdraw from memory module market completely.

"Having balanced this DRAM market weakness against the capital needs of the Company's growing SSD products, the board has determined that it is in the best interests of the stockholders to accelerate plans to discontinue its remaining DRAM module products by the end of its current fiscal year of February 28, 2011. Accordingly, our DRAM products are now expected to have minimal, if any, sales in the next fiscal year and beyond," OCZ said in a statement.

Revenue generated from OCZ's Solid State Drive products for the third fiscal quarter more than doubled on a sequential basis, according to Ryan Petersen, Chief Executive Officer of OCZ Technology. "SSD revenue accounted for 78% of our revenue and just by itself exceeds our historical quarterly revenue totals across all categories, thus reinforcing our decision to discontinue our remaining DRAM products."

Mr. Petersen concluded, "We have focused on building the OEM and enterprise segments of our business, and last month we announced a mass production order from a Tier 1 OEM for our enterprise class SSDs, reflecting the reliability, speed and total cost of ownership solid state drives provide over traditional mechanical hard drives. We believe the market opportunity for SSDs is significant, and to that end, we will continue to invest in research and development to extend our leadership position. We also plan to increase our sales and marketing efforts in order to facilitate continued revenue growth and increased market share as SSDs gain adoption in all segments."

The company plans to focus on Solid State Drive products as well as on building the OEM and enterprise segments of its business. The company will also continue to ship products for enthusiasts, such as flash media or PSUs.

OCZ will continue to fully support its memory modules and will even launch a number of new memory modules that have been in the short-term plans, such as the Fatal1ty launch alongside partners for the new Fatal1ty branded Sandy Bridge motherboard platform from Asrock and some XMP parts with Intel.

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News...x?NewsId=29249

[ragejg]

I wonder if we're going to see a consolidation in the DRAM manufacturing market...

Buffalo, Elixir, A-DATA, ummmm... and other mfgs that aren't the big players... maybe you could put Patriot in there as well...

[Bman212121]

I think the market is just getting flooded with competitors anyway. Same thing with the PSU market. Some component draws attention then everyone rushes to get their piece of the action. In reality both cases they are more or less middlemen as they don't actually make the parts. They just rebrand them and maybe put a little big of changes on top.

[Shamrock]

I OWN 4GB of OCZ Reaper ram too >

[Madpistol]

Originally Posted by Shamrock

I OWN 4GB of OCZ Reaper ram too >

Their technical support is going to continue. It's not like the company is dying.

[Muppet]

With all there recent success in the SSD market, it isn't a surprise. Especially considering how cheap Ram is now. The margins must be real tight.

[Viral]

They haven't seemed to show much interest in memory for at least a year. Glad they're going in other directions TBH, their contribution to the SSD industry has been far more valuable than what they have done for the memory industry. Although, they were one of the first to bring high end RAM prices down somewhat when Corsair dominated the market. Then G.Skill came along and did the same to OCZ, so they weren't really unique anymore.

[AthlonXP1800]

I owned 8GB DDR2 OCZ memory for 2 years now, bought it for £70 and it was the cheapest branded overclockable memory with lifetime warranty. Sad to see OCZ exit DRAM market and I did a research on DRAM manufacturers then now can see why OCZ decided to exit DRAM business. OCZ Technology 2009 revenue was $144m so that not only for the sales of RAM memory but other products like SSD, PSUs etc. Accorded to 10-Q filing that OCZ had made decision to exit RAM business back in August 2010, they checked their inventory of RAM memory modules and had it valued at $2.8m. That not alot of money to make selling RAM memory with just nearly 2% of annual revenue.

I am surprised how wrong many of you believed Corsair is now the big dog dominate the memory market. Actually Corsair sold very fewer RAM memory modules than Kingston, Corsair 2009 revenue was $325.6m. Like OCZ, Corsair sell other products like CPU coolers, PSUs, SSDs, USB flash memory sticks, headphones etc. But Kingston is not the number 1 RAM memory maker, their 2009 revenue was $4.1bn sell memory products. So the top dog number 1 is surprise surprise Crucial! Like Kingston, Crucial which is a part of Micron Technology sell memory products with 2010 revenue accounted $8.482bn. Crucial/Micron sold more memory products than OCZ, Corsair, GEIL, G.Skill and Kingston all combined.

[Madpistol]

I think Corsair used to be the top dog, but now that they're moving into other products, they've let their RAM empire slip in profitability. However, they currently own the PSU industry, and they are moving ahead steadily in their foray into cases and CPU coolers. Corsair has changed their business model. It seems that they are profitable too. Lets see what happens from here.

Corsair will continue to survive if they keep this mentality up. They are selling great products at reasonable prices with great customer service. It's hard to ask for anything more than that.

[Starscream]

Good riddance.

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=150727

[Shamrock]

Originally Posted by Madpistol

Their technical support is going to continue. It's not like the company is dying.

I guess you've never been a victim...er... customer. I bought my RAM in late 2009, I am STILL waiting on my $30 MIR. It took 3 MONTHS of troubleshooting my ram, to figure out that it had 212 bad sectors (verified by memtest86 on the FIRST day). The Ram sucks to begin with, when it has to be downclocked because it requires 1.9v to function @ 1600mhz (which was NOT on the website when I bought it). I'm currently still using the OCZ @ 1333mhz.