Fred, IMO, it's the stupid, not the sinister hypothesis. Either that, or people are selling semis at least 2 years before any appreciable downturn. Maybe they're smarter than we are. Semis have gone up tremendously, why not take the profits now? Having said that, doesn't the market look 6 months or so out, not 2 years?
One reason I think it's the stupid case (I like your hypothesis names) is the tone Intel gave in this Tuesday's CC. Even with the massive extra capacity they're pouring on, and yield improvements they're getting, they still see tight supply through Q3, maybe further. AMD the same.
Two points I picked up from Intel's CC that were cap equip related (from my Intel post):
2. Flash: 3 (Three) fabs planned to be running at 0.18 by end of year. That are a lot!
6. Cap spending? (Ques. form G. Klauer). Andy said Intel would even like to be able to get in house some more pieces of equipment, if they could. The cap equip companies are production constrained also. Next year? Andy said he couldn't estimate cap expenditures yet.
Intel and AMD are "just 2 companies" (but one of them is pretty big), but I think demand is high for the foreseeable future for the network, cell phone and other broadband chips as well as the processor ones.
Tony |
