英特尔和美光的蜜月期将很快结束，分手在所难免

esting into IMFT as a result of lower memory cost per GB is roughly when Micron will be able to take back a substantial ownership stake in IMFT. So that's a huge problem for Intel investors who were banking on this business partnership to be long-term accretive to earnings. There's the potential that Intel no longer owns IMFT following 2018. So a forced sale for what could have been a star business could become a problem for Intel shareholders.

On the most recent earnings conference call, an analyst asked about Intel's relationship with Micron. Here's what Mark Durcan (CEO of Micron) stated:

Now relative to Micron's and Intel's plans for production, there's not a whole lot I can say about that today, other than to say it continues to be a very close partnership. We continue to develop the 3D NAND technology together and we have existing long-term supply agreements with Intel to support planar NAND and we anticipate that we will build 3D NAND for them as well through an agreement out of Singapore. And that's probably all I can say, absent an agreement with Intel to share more information with you.

So at this point, we're not even sure if Micron and Intel will continue down this path as partners, and with Micron also forming a partnership with Seagate (NASDAQ:STX), it's entirely plausible that Micron will exercise its right to buy back the remaining ownership interest in IMFT. It will then go down a path where it supplies Seagate with flash memory products and develop NAND flash technology jointly with Seagate.

So, Intel might not be a memory supplier for much longer folks. Just have to break the bad news to you guys. However, they might create a new agreement with Intel. Just not sure if Intel will bite, and while storage is a promising area, I'm curious to see how much Micron will have to pay in order to gain back the IMFT business. At the current growth trajectory, Intel will get a big lump sum of cash between 2018 and 2020. So, it's not bad. But ideally, I would have wanted Intel to own IMFT past 2020.