Micron Misses on Weak Chip Sales

by Christopher Freeburn | September 28, 2012 10:30 am

Micron Technology (NASDAQ:MU[1]) said on Thursday that it lost $243 million during its fiscal fourth quarter[2], compared to a loss of $135 million in the same period last year.

That came to a loss of 24 cents a share, slightly worse than the loss of 23 cents a share, expected by Wall Street, Bloomberg noted.

For the quarter, revenues were $1.96 billion, down 8.3% from last year, and falling short of the $2.11 billion forecast by analysts.

Despite the poor results, shares of Micron Technology rose more than 2% in Friday morning trading.

Company officials attributed the worse-than-expected results to diminishing demand for personal computers, for which the company manufacturers DRAM memory chips. Sales for its DRAM chips fell 9% compared to last year.

Personal computer sales have continued to slide as the machines face growing competition from mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers, including Apple‘s (NASDAQ:AAPL[3]) iPad and Amazon‘s (NASDAQ:AMZN[4]) Kindle Fire.

Falling demand for PCs continues, despite the approaching holiday shopping season and the release next month of Microsoft‘s (NASDAQ:MSFT[5]) new Windows 8 operating system.  The lack of any rise in PC demand prior to the Windows 8 release has provoked concern amongst technology sector analysts.

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