Intel Can Leave Memory Games to Samsung
The chipmaker is smart to abandon a market where it’s dwarfed by Samsung. It needs to focus on its core business.
Intel has been losing ground in its core chip business. Giving up on memory will help it refocus.
Photographer: Manjunath Kiran/AFP via Getty Images
Intel Corp. has stumbled lately. To right itself, the semiconductor giant needs to get back to basics and prioritize its main business. An exit from the memory industry will help that effort.
The company agreed to sell its Nand memory-chip subsidiary to South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc. for about $9 billion, the Asian chipmaker said in a statement late Monday New York time. Despite large investments in flash memory, Intel has never been able to become a big player in these types of semiconductors, which are used in storage devices inside computer hard drives and consumer electronics. That’s a problem because in a commodity market such as memory, leadership and size are essential to generate profits over the long term.