Competing in the memory business will not be an easy battle.
Last year, Intel's flash memory business lost $500 million on sales of $2 billion.
Over all, the company beat expectations because of the strength of its memory business.
Even as the flash memory business is growing rapidly over all, however, some formats are losing market share.
Micron had offered to pay about $3.4 billion for Hynix's core memory business, and to take a minority stake in the non-memory arm.
"What Intel doesn't want is another company like Intel dominating the memory business," said David Wu, an analyst with Global Crown Capital.
In December, Intel sold its cellular chip business to the Marvell Technology Group, making Intel's presence in the NOR memory business less strategic to the company, analysts said.
As of last quarter, A.M.D., the second-largest flash memory supplier, received 35percentt of its revenue from its flash memory business.
His wife helped him put together a Web site and film tutorials, and they decided that, after the spring term ended, they would both take a year off from school to devote themselves to the memory business as a team.
And the usual technique for increasing capacity in the memory business quickly by squeezing more, smaller chips on to a wafer does not work with LCDs: the demand is for larger screens, not smaller ones.By next year the LCD market will be as big as the memory market and should overtake it next time the memory market turns down (see chart).
Intel has its flash memory business.
