According to a report from the reference news network, Taiwan's "Wang Pao" website recently said that Micron Technology, one of the world's largest manufacturers of semiconductor storage and imaging products, is working hard to repair relations with the mainland, and has announced that it has reached a settlement with the mainland's competitor Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. This also means that the six-year-long "memory theft case" has finally come to an end.
It is worth mentioning that Micron is estimated to have made a bloody investment this time, because this settlement is a global settlement, and Micron and Jinhua will withdraw the lawsuits of both parties worldwide.
The cause of this incident needs to be traced back to February 2016. At that time, Fujian Electronic Information Group and Jinjiang Energy Investment Group Co., Ltd. jointly invested in Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd., which manufactured DRAM memory chips through a technical cooperation with UMC in Taiwan.
Storage chips can generally be divided into flash memory and memory, memory is mainly DRAM, and flash memory is divided into NAND Flash and NOR Flash. At present, the world's memory chips are basically monopolized.
According to data from market research firm Omdia, in 2021, Micron, Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, Western Digital, Kioxia, and Solidigm monopolized 96.76% of the global NAND Flash market. In addition, Micron, Samsung Electronics, and SK hynix monopolize 94.35% of the global DRAM market.
Therefore, if the mainland wants to develop DRAM memory chips, it can't bypass Micron and the two Korean companies, and it is very likely that it will have conflicts with these three companies in various fields.
The signing of a cooperation agreement between UMC and Fujian Jinhua in Taiwan will help Jinhua develop 32nm DRAM-related process technology. After that, three senior executives of Micron went to work at UMC, which led to a "memory theft case". These three are named Chen Zhengkun, He Jianting, and Wang Yongming.
In September 2017, Micron suddenly sued UMC in Taiwan, accusing the three senior executives who had jumped from Micron to UMC for stealing Micron's DRAM technology, and then used these technologies to help Fujian Jinhua develop 32nm DRAM memory chips.
In December of the same year, Micron went to the federal court in California to sue Fujian Jinhua and UMC, alleging that UMC stole Micron's DRAM technology through Micron's employees in Taiwan and delivered it to Fujian Jinhua.
Everyone has already shown their swords, and Fujian Jinhua naturally wants to respond.
In January 2018, Fujian Jinhua believed that a series of products sold by Micron in China caused infringement, so it filed a lawsuit against Micron, demanding that Micron immediately stop the infringement of Fujian Jinhua's patents and claim 196 million yuan from Micron.
In July of the same year, the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court ruled that Micron's Chinese company, Micron Semiconductor Sales (Shanghai) Co., Ltd., was infringing, and immediately stopped selling and importing a variety of Crucial brand chips, memory modules and solid-state drives, and at the same time ruled that Micron Semiconductor (Xi'an) Co., Ltd. should also immediately stop selling and importing a variety of memory modules.
As soon as he saw that he was really rectified by Fujian Jinhua, Micron completely tore his face and went directly to the U.S. Department of Commerce. In October 2018, Fujian Jinhua was included in the "Entity List" by the U.S. Department of Commerce, citing the old-fashioned excuse of "U.S. national security".
Now that the U.S. Department of Commerce has come out, the U.S. courts have also pushed the boat. On November 1, 2018, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California began criminal proceedings to prosecute Fujian Jinhua and UMC for stealing Micron Technology's trade secrets.
In June 2020, Taiwan's Taichung District Court announced that Micron sued UMC for stealing its trade secrets, and three He Jianting, who jumped from Micron to UMC, were sentenced to 5 years and 6 months in prison, Wang Yongming was sentenced to 4 years and 6 months in prison, UMC associate Rong Lotian was sentenced to 6 years and 6 months in prison, and UMC was fined NT$100 million.
In October 2020, UMC chose to settle with the U.S. Department of Justice, and after paying a $60 million fine, Micron dropped the charges.
On the evening of May 21, 2023, the official website of the Cyber Security Review Office of the Mainland released the relevant results of Micron's products sold in China that did not pass the cybersecurity review. In accordance with China's Cybersecurity Law and other laws and regulations, operators of critical information infrastructure in China will stop purchasing any Micron products.
As soon as the incident came out, it was undoubtedly good news for domestic memory chip companies, because in this way they could achieve domestic substitution. Naturally, Micron is certainly not willing to give up the Chinese market, because the Chinese market is one of Micron's largest markets. As early as 2018, the Chinese market contributed $17.357 billion to Micron, accounting for 58% of Micron's annual revenue that year.
Since then, Micron's market share in China has been shrinking, with its Chinese market revenue of only $3.311 billion in 2022 and annual revenue of $30.758 billion, accounting for only 11% of the revenue in the Chinese market.
Isn't Micron in a hurry? It's in a hurry. So in order to ease relations, Micron must reconcile with Fujian Jinhua. Otherwise, Micron's market share will decrease.