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Infineon jumps two spots to number two in memory

Michael Kanellos Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Michael Kanellos is editor at large at CNET News.com, where he covers hardware, research and development, start-ups and the tech industry overseas.
Michael Kanellos
Germany's Infineon Technologies jumped from fourth place to second in the DRAM market during the first quarter, thanks to a 49 percent jump in sales.

Infineon reported DRAM sales of $1.16 billion, up from $778 million in the fourth quarter, according to research firm iSuppli. As a result, Infineon's market share jumped 4.9 percent to 17.5 percent.

Infineon's surge was partly due to disappointing results at Hynix, which got knocked from second to third and Samsung, still number one. Hynix saw sales decline by 7 percent while Samsung's sales declined 3 percent.

Additionally, Infineon increased bit shipments, or the amount of memory shipped by counting the memory cells, rose by 30 percent compared to the fourth quarter. Infineon also saw a slight six percent rise in average selling price. That's a rarity: memory prices usually only go the other way.

Nonetheless, Infineon, which also makes other types of chips, lost $32 million in the first quarter.

The company plans to spin out its memory unit into a company called Qimonda.