That is what I am saying, these are called "push-out", "Delays" or outright "cancellations". Fab often takes more than a year to put together. Some chip people, particularly in Taiwan, have decided to expand, but they may have second thoughts, they wanted to keep themselves in line for equipment (when the rush starts deliveries schedule get lengthened and they get the equipment of middle of the next down turn), thus they ordered even though, they were not 100% sure of the schedule of acceptance they can have. As I was just notified by a lurker, additional problems facing the industry is the very slow adoption of the .13 Micron technology. It turns out that this is not as simple as was expected and there are a lot of problems in launching the technology, the word spread, so those that have not committed are waiting until the glitches are solved, and thus another potential delay in the deployment of the next "new technologies" (300 mm and .13 microns).
I should reemphasize tha I expected the industry to have pushed in all orders they could for the end of the quarter ending 4/30, and thus have a more or less even order flow (just $1 B) in May, but I also expected the rate of billings to increase a bit (to $.88 B), but there it seems that despite the availability of backlos, the industry was not in a rush to take it.
Zeev |
