Acer courts TI's Tai DRam plant

Acer is set to buy Texas Instruments' (TI) DRam manufacturing plant in the Taiwanese science park, south of the capital city of Taipei.

The hardware vendor will now hold over 80 per cent of the manufacturing capacity of the high-end factory, although the company refused to say how much it had paid for the facility.

Last month, Texas Instruments/ Acer abandoned plans for floating the joint venture and wanted to raise nearly $200 million for the venture.

Acer has been experiencing problems because it is competing against Taiwanese companies which have already made a killing in foreign markets by using the facility in the country.

The move that Acer, probably the largest PC OEM in the world, was forced to buy out TI in Taiwan, caused its share price to slightly fall by four Taiwanese dollars to $70.

Now Acer will seek other partners to help continue fabrication in the Taiwanese science park and share the costs of running a plant.

Last week, Samsung was looking for investment in South Korea from Intel to the tune of $1 billion, but that may be affected by the profit warning the chip giant issued last week.

The buyout comes after Texas Instruments reported a loss of about $144 million in December 1997, one of Taiwan's largest corporate losses, because of a drop of about 70 per cent for DRam chips.

Acer holds 48.7 per cent of Texas Instruments/Acer. The other major owner, Taiwan investment company China Development, holds 14.2 per cent (see page 6).