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In relation to the S. Korean situation --
Angela,
I too saw the show and had a similar thought process (below). Taiwan is definitely in a stronger position than Korea financially and definitely has aspirations to move into memory chips at 250 nm design rules and smaller. This would seem to be a great opportunity for the Taiwanese to seize market share from the Koreans. However, while they have cash to buy equipment in the short term, the implementation of this equipment and (more importantly) the switch from logic chips to high end memory chips is challenging (design, manufacture, test). It also requires a different customer set than they are used to. Remember that the Koreans worked hard on all the above including relations with the largest memory chip consumers (IBM etc) including multinational manufacturing sites. IMHO I believe that commercial outside forces to shore up their existing suppliers of chips (Samsung, Hyundai, LG) is less problematic than accelerating the Taiwanese in the short term (<3yrs). Of course, in the long term, spreading risk would be desirable to more than one country. Siemens is a partner with MOSEL in Taiwan for instance ( any other memory examples in Taiwan?).
So while Taiwan may pick up some earlier deliveries of DUV (cymer equipped) steppers at the expense of the Koreans, I believe the Int'l business inertia is still with the Koreans who are better able to implement the technology which some of the largest corporations need for their business.
Thoughts / comments?
TI2
Angela writes:
Tonight on Rukeyser, one of the analysts said that
several Asian countries are still strong financially --
Malasayia and Taiwan among them. Which reminded me that
I saw an article about Taiwan wanting to seize the moment and take
market share away from S. Korea if S. Korea has to slow
down on capital expenditures. In addition, Scotland is trying
to establish itself as a leader in ASIC manufacturing and is
building fabs. In relation to Zeev's remarks about contraction --
the semiconductor equipment industry contracts and expands over and
over again, but it will keep on going.
Angela |
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