Taipei, Sept. 3 (CNA) Memory chip makers Nanya Technology Corp. and Inotera Memories, Inc. on Friday reported higher sales for August from a month earlier on increasing production.

Last month, Nanya Technology posted sales of NT$5.26 billion (US$164 million), up 3.2 percent from July, while Inotera had sales of NT$3.21 billion, up 1.4 percent from a month earlier.

The two dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip makers, affiliated with the Formosa Plastics Group, said the increase in production came from an upgrade in their production processes, which was intended to offset the impact of falling DRAM prices.

They added that if DRAM prices can stabilize, their profitability will improve as production increases from the technology upgrade.

In the second quarter of this year, Nanya Technology posted NT$1.02 billion in net losses, compared with NT$1.63 billion in net loss in the first quarter.

Inotera also registered NT$1.81 billion in net losses in the second quarter, extending its NT$1.56 billion in net losses in the first quarter.

The global DRAM sector is suffering from declining prices because of demand weakened by the eurozone's debt problems and the slowing pace of global economic recovery, market observers said.

DRAM prices staged a significant rebound in the fourth quarter of last year after a meltdown amid the global financial crisis in 2008, and the momentum extended into the first quarter of this year before the European debt problems surfaced. (By Jackson Chang and Frances Huang) enditem/ls