Qimonda says Time Out to the flash market

Memory chip maker Qimonda has stopped development of NAND flash memory devicees based on the NROM technology the company has licenced from Saifun Semiconductors. According to a spokesperson from Qimonda the move is a consequence of the present market weakness. Qimonda will also scale down the manufacturing of these chips. Although Qimonda by the down scaled operatons within NROM devices the company does not intend to retreat entirely from the flash market. "We used NROM to manufacture commodity NAND flash products," the spokesperson said. "But the market weakness for these products makes it simply unattractive to dedicate manufacturing and development resources to it", he added. "We clearly see a high market potential for non-volatile memory products," the spokesperson explained, Nevertheless, he did not elaborate on timing and technology for such a future offering.