The Irony of Micron's possible purchase of Elpida

In 1989 Shintaro Ishihara and Akio Morita co-authored a book titled "The Japan That Can Say No". The book was an endless trip in Japanese jingoism and how America should just give up and kill itself. The book is garbage to say the least but can be quite hilarious in retrospect. So how does this book connect to Micron's possible takeover of Elpida? In the book Shintaro Ishihara goes on and on over how superior Japanese technology is, evident by Japan's (then) near dominance of the semiconductor industry, specifically DRAM chips. For in the 1980s American DRAM makers found it excessively hard to compete with the Japanese and in 1985 seven of America's semiconductor makers exited the DRAM market due to failure to compete with the Japanese. Micron was the one of the few American DRAM maker to stay in business. Even Intel had to completely abandon DRAM, the technology it pioneered and focus instead on microcomputer processors.

Elpida (Greek for hope) was founded in 1999 as a result of the merger of Hitachi's and NEC's DRAM business and in 2003 it took over Mitsubishi's DRAM business as well. The reason for this merger was the Koreans. Japanese companies found it hard to match and compete with the Samsung and Hynix in the cut-throat memory business without spinning off their DRAM divisions and merging them and thus Elpida was formed. They needed a more nimble and focused company, because the parent companies (Hitachi, NEC and Mitsubishi) were too big, too diverse and too slow to react.

Now it has come full circle. Micron the once small Idaho-based DRAM maker is taking over the last standing Japanese DRAM-maker, Elpida. All of this, while Shintaro Ishihara is still alive to witness it unfold.