Windows 7 optimism could bring down hardware prices

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http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/17784

Barrons.com says AMD's comment in particular has cast doubt on Wall Street, leading stock prices for major chip vendors and hard-drive makers to slip. The site says excessive inventory could lead to "both reduced component consumption in Q4 and beyond . . . and lower pricing for memory."

That potential course of events would be particularly bad news for memory makers, which are just starting to recover from quarter upon quarter of oversupply and rock-bottom prices. Contract prices for DDR2 memory chips went above those for DDR3 a week ago, and today, 4GB DDR2 and DDR3 dual-channel kits are practically at parity around the $70 mark. A few months back, 4GB DDR2 kits could be snagged for around 40 bucks

http://blogs.barrons.com/techt...cipation-of-windows-7/

That has triggered concerns that the PC industry has built too much inventory - and that it could result in both reduced component consumption in Q4 and beyond, and lower pricing for memory, which has benefited in recent weeks from higher NAND and DRAM prices. You can see the result in today?s sell-off in memory chip and disk-drive stocks:

AMD is down 48 cents, or 7.8%%, to $5.71
Intel (INTC) is down 48 cents, or 2.3%, to $20.19.
Nvidia (NVDA) is down 32 cents, or 2.4%, to $13.21.
Micron (MU) is down 74 cents, or 8.6%, to $7.91.
SanDisk (SNDK) is down 96 cents, or 4.4%, to $21.04.
Smart Modular (SMOD) is down 43.5 cents, or 9.8%, to $3.995.
STEC (STEC) is down 68 cents, or 2.7%, to $24.50.
Seagate (STX) is down 34 cents, or 2.2%, to $15.20.
Western Digital (WDC) is down 58 cents, or 1.6%, to $35.64