Hi Carl,
Glad to see you posting and I am sure that you can help add more substance to the thread.
Regarding " drought in chip demand". You seem to follow the unit shipments, while my mind is focusssed on the dollar shipments
home.comcast.net
In mid 2003 the chip dollar sales were at the same levels of mid 1995. Despite the euphoria of the last few months, the chip sales are significantly below the levels of 2003.
A part of the reason for the "drought" has been the communication meltdown, and a lack of new software killer applications on the PC, ie a new must have application which forces everyone to throw out the old hardware and buy new hardware. Examples of such new killer applications were Lotus 123, Windows 3.1, Multimedia Games,and Windows 95. So the vast majority of people are continuing to limp along on old 4-7 year old PCs. The one welcome change in the last 6 months has been the Centrino and WiMax, which has spurred the sales of new Laptops, and is responsible for a part of the surge during the last six months. However this change was trigerred by a major Hardware innovation as opposed to New Software which was the case historically. The remainder of the present uptick is due to the greater PC and cell phone penetration in China and India. This penetration is due to the falling price of electronics and improving prosperity in those markets, and not due to brand new applications.
Maybe I should use the phrase,"a lack of new MIPS sucking applications" instead of "a lack of new killer software application".
Wireless 3G has been waiting in the wings, waiting for a killer application. The ISP have not yet seen a major killer application on the cell phone, which can benefit from the higher 3G bandwidth. Japan and Korea and UK have had 3G for a while, but it has not yet set the world on fire. But with the right software it could all change very quickly. In hindsight the Internet had been around for years, but the Mosaic and Netscape browsers, were the trigger which finally took us past the "inflection point". |
