Micron is regarded as a very technologically adept. The have a strong track record of delivering leading/performant dram without the manufacturing bells and whistles used by competitors. The CEO was one of the important engineers behind NAND flash back in the day

> Why not hold your cards until afterwards?

It's a public company that is beholden to the shareholders. They have to explain what they are doing. But I agree with you, seems sus. Even if you can make more money by scaling the old tech today, that does not justify dropping the future innovation. Especially because by all accounts they are swimming in cash... Unless they are telling the truth and 4f extra complexity does not justify extra cost. I really have no context to evaluate that.

why show their hand right before their competitors make the foolish choice of releasing it?

I suspect it is because Micron is a publicly traded company, its management has to answer questions from the investor community.

And because DRAM is a commodity business, profits in the long term are possible even if a company does not win first-to-market profits.

Finally, there is always a market segment that is not betting on the new technology when it is new.

A little hard to explain it to the shareholders. Yeah that expensive investment research project? A total fake out to mislead our competitors. We actually bought snacks and drinks for everyone with that money!

> Sounds rather more like a company behind the innovation curve pretending to "skip" the innovation as if to jump into a better innovation.

This is not unlike the strategy the US employed to win the space race after they were quite behind in said race. It's a bold strategy, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off! (I'm not confident since I don't find the CEO to be anything more than a margin chaser).

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