Foreign share of Japan's chip market falls in Q3
WASHINGTON, Feb 24 (Reuters) - The foreign share of Japan's
computer chip market fell in the third quarter of 1997 to 32.1
percent from 35.8 percent in the second quarter, the U.S.
government said Tuesday.
It was the first reduction in foreign share of Japan's
semiconductor market since the second quarter 1996, the U.S.
trade representative's office said. The decline in the third
quarter appeared to be due to market conditions, the government
said.
"Over the next few quarters, we will be monitoring the
Japanese market to ensure that foreign participation in the
semiconductor market returns to the positive path that it has
followed recently," U.S. Commerce Secretary William Daley said
in a statement.
U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky said a
resumption of a more positive trend in the foreign share of
Japan's market was critical in light of Asian and world
semiconductor capacity. South Korea is a major producer of
dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips. A global glut in
DRAMs has pushed prices dramatically lower.
Falling demand for computers in Japan led to a decrease in
sales of microprocessors, which are primarily produced in the
United States, the government said. At the same time, Japan
increased production of DRAMs and supplied a larger portion of
its home market, the U.S. government said.
U.S. computer chip sales to Japan have grown from under $1
billion in 1986, when the first bilateral trade agreement
between Japan and the United States was signed, to $7 billion
in 1996, the government said. |
