Qimonda
| Qimonda AG i. In.
|
|
|---|---|
 |
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| legal form | Stock company in bankruptcy |
| founding | 2004 |
| Seat | Munich , Germany |
| management | Michael Jaffé , liquidator |
| Number of employees | 11,079 (December 31, 2008) |
| sales | 1.79 billion euros (2008) |
| Branch | Semiconductor industry |
| Website | www.qimonda.com |
The Qimonda AG was a semiconductor company with headquarters in Munich . The majority of the company was owned by Infineon Technologies AG, holding 77.5 percent .
In the 2008 financial year, Qimonda achieved sales of 1.79 billion euros and had 11,079 employees worldwide as of December 31, 2008, of which 1707 were employed in research and development.
As a result of the massive drop in prices in the industry Qimonda early 2009 went into bankruptcy .
history
founding
The company was founded in May 2004 under the name Invot AG as a subsidiary of Infineon Technologies AG and renamed Qimonda AG on April 6, 2006. With effect from May 1, 2006, Infineon Technologies AG transferred its memory chip division to this company. Kin Wah Loh, who was born in Malay and who had been responsible for the storage division of the parent company since summer 2005, took over the management of the company.
The IPO on the New York Stock Exchange followed on August 9, 2006 with an issue price of US $ 13.00 .
insolvency
On October 13, 2008, the company announced an austerity program that would cut 3,000 of the 13,500 jobs worldwide. The Munich, Dresden and Richmond (USA) locations should be primarily affected. The resignation of CFO Michael Majerus was also announced. By autumn 2009, around 450 million euros should be saved worldwide each year. Qimonda has also sold its 35.6 percent stake in the memory chip manufacturer Inotera , a joint venture with the Taiwanese Nanya group, to the US company Micron Technology .
Since mid-2008, the main shareholder Infineon has been looking for a buyer for Qimonda, according to its own information, as the company incurred heavy losses. The companies Hynix Semiconductor and Micron were brought up for discussion as serious strategic partners and investors . At that time, Qimonda published reports on the development of the "buried wordline technology", which should make it possible, with structure sizes of 30 nanometers, to produce chips with twice the storage capacity than previously with the trench technology (the capacitor of a DRAM cell was as deep Hole in the silicon substrate realized). At that time, Qimonda was the only one of the major DRAM manufacturers who still used trench technology. Other manufacturers, however, used the so-called stack technology . In addition to a significant reduction in manufacturing costs, this also means significantly lower energy consumption by memory chips.
According to media reports, Infineon sought state aid from the state of Saxony and the Federal Republic of Germany. On December 21, 2008 it was announced that Portugal (100 million euros), Saxony (150 million euros) and Infineon (75 million euros) wanted to continue financing the company with a loan totaling 325 million euros. However, the condition for the payment of the funds was the preservation of the factories in Saxony (Dresden) and Portugal ( Vila do Conde ).
On January 23, 2009, the Munich District Court ordered the preliminary insolvency administration and appointed attorney Michael Jaffé as the preliminary insolvency administrator . Production was initially able to continue, but then had to be discontinued in April 2009, and the factories in Richmond, Portugal and Germany were closed during the year. The remains of the factory in Dresden were taken over by Infineon in May 2011.
Today Qimonda AG i. I. and the US subsidiary Qimonda Licensing LLC the existing license and patent portfolio of around 4,500 patent families.
Interpretation of terms
The name “Qimonda” can be pronounced well and in a similar way in most languages. According to Infineon, the name has "universal name properties that work worldwide". Qi stands (in this pronunciation in Mandarin Chinese , in another pronunciation in several East Asian languages) for "breathing and flowing energy". In the western culture, where the languages are almost all related to Latin and strongly influenced by English, the name should be interpreted as " key to the world " (key-monda).
Aeneon
Aeneon was founded in 2004 as a division, at that time still part of Infineon's Memory Products division . Under the brand Aeneon sales Qimonda DRAM - modules for notebooks, PCs and server systems, as well as flash products such as USB sticks, SD cards and microSD cards.
Aeneon was the brand for the retail and channel business of Qimonda AG and thus served the end consumer with memory products through specialist dealers and PC assemblers. As of January 2010, Aeneon products are no longer available.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Key figures for the first quarter of the 2009 financial year . (PDF) infineon.com
- ↑ Insolvency proceedings via Qimonda AG and Qimonda Dresden GmbH (PDF; 67 kB) jaffe-rae.de
- ↑ The drop in chip prices affects Infineon subsidiary Qimonda. In: WirtschaftsWoche. Retrieved January 24, 2009 .
- ↑ Serious allegations against Qimonda bosses . Welt Online , January 23, 2009.
- ↑ [bundesanzeiger.de: Qimonda AG, annual financial statements as of September 30, 2007]
- ↑ manager-magazin.de: A company for all cases
- ↑ Infineon drives spin-off: New storage company Qimonda starts on May 1, 2006. Infineon Technologies, accessed on January 24, 2009 .
- ^ History on the Inotera website ( Memento from May 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Daniel Goffart: Saxony's Prime Minister Tillich: Don't let Qimonda blackmail us . In: Handelsblatt , December 5, 2008, accessed on August 19, 2009.
- ↑ Síle Mc Mahon_: Qimonda to fab 'Buried Wordline' DRAM technology as replacement to 'Deep-Trench' . Fabtech, February 26, 2008.
- ^ Frances Robinson, Brian Parkin: Infineon, Qimonda Asked for State Aid, Saxony Region Says . On: Bloomberg , November 27, 2008.
- ↑ Qimonda receives 325 million euros . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. SZ-Online, December 21, 2008.
- ↑ a b Qimonda story ( Memento from January 16, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on the Qimonda Licensing website
- ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: MDR, May 11, 2011 )
