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The end of last week brought some encouraging words about Micron Technology (MU) from bulls on the stock.

Paul Peterson of the boutique BlueFin research house writes, after travels in Asia meeting with 40 different contacts in the chip industry, that the “memory market is not rolling over."

Things helping the memory-chip business include rising production of Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone, an increase in memory capacity in Chinese smartphones, which are going from four gigabytes of on-board memory to six or even eight gigs; demand in the data center; and rise in sales in personal computers.

"Our recent Asia trip reaffirmed our relatively bullish views on the memory market,” he wrote.

Furthermore, "Many sell-siders continue to misinterpret the nuances of the gray market in our view, while relying too heavily on Samsung data points which are often not indicative of the market in general."

Peterson refers back to a recent forecast his team made for Apple to increase its production of iPhones, which he thinks will be “a significant boost to NAND demand."

Vijay Rakesh of Mizuho Securities reiterated a Buy rating, and a $72 price target, and wrote that "DRAM remains tight entering build season, with inventory in the ~1-week range."

As for NAND, that market "is softer,” he observed, but with rising sales of solid-state drives, handsets, and with continued demand for "Enterprise/Data Center,” there are some "positive tailwinds” for Micron and its NAND competitors.

And C.J. Muse of Evercore ISI, coming back from the Semicon West trade show in San Francisco last week, reports that NAND price declines will "likely persist over the next 2-3 quarters,” while adding that "longer-term, management teams expect a healthy market."

There’s been lots of chatter, he notes, about Samsung delaying some DRAM production, which he thinks "clear rational behavior.

"We think Samsung wanted to keep DRAM pricing elevated into the back half of the year (continue to hear ASPs tracking up Q/Q in 3Q and then flat in 4Q)."

Muse prefers the DRAM business to NAND, which is why he thinks Micron has better prospects than Western Digital (WDC).

And, he adds, "As for concerns regarding a slowdown from the Data Center, we just don’t see it."

Looking a little further out in time, Karl Ackerman with Cowen & Co. writes, "We wouldn’t be surprised to see AugQ revs/EPS toward the bottom-end of the company’s $8.0-$8.4B/$3.23-$3.37 ranges” for Micron.

"Longer term, we cannot ignore competitive risks are mounting in the memory market,” from China, he writes, "though we remain skeptical that XMC, Jinhua and Innotron will be able to materially disrupt memory supply/demand dynamics for the next 5 years given XMC’s poor yields on 32L 3D NAND today and the broader group’s unproven commercialization of DRAM technology."

Micron shares are up 37 cents to $56.72.

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