Taiwan-based Winbond Electronics, a maker of niche-market DRAM and NOR flash memory, has reported its third consecutive quarterly loss due to falling ASPs of its products in particular specialty DRAM chips.

However, Winbond expects the price pressure to ease in the second quarter, as orders especially those for NOR flash memory are picking up, company president Tung-Yi Chan said at an April 25 investors meeting.

Chan also noted that Winbond is scheduled to mass produce chips using a newer 46nm process during the second half of 2012, which will allow it to lower manufacturing costs and further mitigate the impact of falling chip prices.

Winbond set a capex target of NT$3.6 billion (US$122.3 million) for 2012 with the majority of it to be used to buy new equipment for advanced process manufacturing, accoding to Chan. The firm will shift to 46nm process technology for the production of specialty DRAM, and 58nm for flash products, Chan added.

Winbond announced revenues of NT$5.81 billion for the first quarter of 2012, up 2% sequentially but down 19% from a year ago. It generated net losses of NT$ 646 million, or NT$0.18 a share.

Sales of Winbond's specialty DRAM accounted for 45% of company revenues in the first quarter, followed by NOR flash with 39% and mobile RAM with about 15%.