Micron Technology Inc. led the pack of a series of technology companies which saw their shares drop heavily on Wednesday due to falling chip prices. Legendary memory maker Micron saw its shares drop 9 percent as of this time after it announced losses of $158 million, or 21 cents a share, compared to a profit of $64 million, or 8 cents a share, a year ago. Micron has been hit by an oversupply of DRAM memory and NAND flash memory chips which drove the prices down some 15 percent in the quarter.

A large array of other companies lost about 2 percent, among which Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Broadcom Corp. and Intel Corp.

Either way, the outlook for Micron looks strong. Founded in 1978, the company has continued to gain share in other markets such as the CMOS image sensor business driven by better demand and cost reductions. The company had sales of $1.44 billion in the quarter. Micron is fifth largest DRAM producer in the world (its PC DRAM business accounts for 45-50% of total sales) and saw strong sequential growth and solid demand in computing, cellphones, and consumer electronic segments.

"Due to industry wide oversupply in the memory markets, the absolute price levels have been under pressure. Market demand for computing products continues to be robust amidst typical seasonal demand strength heading out of calendar Q3 and into calendar Q4," Micron Technology CFO Mike Sadler said.

Micron was originally founded in Boise, Idaho, in 1978 and kicked off by making 64K DRAM chips. Its brands include Lexar, Crucial Technology and SpecTek. The company cooperated with prosecutors in the investigation into a notorious worldwide DRAM price fixing conspiracy during 1999-2002 and has paid no fines, but rivals such as Samsung, Hynix and Infineon paid sums in the hundreds of millions of dollars each.