From the Financial Times. Jeff
COMPANIES & FINANCE: THE AMERICAS: New orders at Dollars 3bn record for Applied
86% match; Financial Times ; 11-May-2000 12:00:00 am ; 279 words
..........."There is huge demand for chips for telecommunications, internet, wireless and games applications," said Jim Morgan, chief executive at Applied. "Chipmakers have not been investing for three years, hence the current boom in our orders." Applied said that despite the worldwide demand for chips, certain regions were still behind in chip equipment investments.
Korean chip companies are behind rivals, while Japanese and Malaysian chipmakers are only just beginning to increase capital expenditure in production facilities.
Taiwanese chipmakers are doing well because they began investing in their chip factories at an earlier stage, the company said.
A general chip shortage, especially in flash memory, is affecting production plans of virtually every computer and electronics manufacturer.
Applied noted that its customers had been changing capital expenditure projections every three months.
This makes it difficult for it to plan production, which in turn could lead to its customers being unable to obtain the chip production equipment they need.
For example, Intel, the chipmaker, doubled capital expenditure this year to Dollars 6bn as it races to meet what it called "unseasonably" strong demand for its chips.
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