from the Micron article:
<He told Semiconductor Business News that as soon as the deal is completed in September, Micron will start installing deep-ultraviolet (DUV) processing at the TI fab at Avessano, Italy, and at the joint-venture fabs that TI divested: with Kobe Steel in Japan and with Hewlett-Packard and Canon Inc. in Singapore. He said he expected the upgrade conversions to take about a year.
"That will bring the fabs we get from TI to the same productivity level as Micron's Boise fabs," Appleton explained. "It will sharply increase the output of DRAMs [from the die shrinks], giving Micron an overwhelming cost advantage in the highly competitive DRAM market.">
So.......the Asian memory companies are going to prop up prices by closing for a few days, while Micron is planning a huge increase in capacity, to come on-line through 1999. As of today, there are 40 fabs making memory, and the market only needs 25. What is Micron trying to do here, be the last one (barely) standing? They lost 100 million last quarter. How long can they keep on doing that? If they carry out this plan, noone will make money in memory at 16 or 64 mb, through 1999. Any benefits from "cost advantage" or units sold will be overwhelmed by continuing ASP declines. Think of what the industry will look like in mid-1999. In the poker game, I think Micron is putting their last chips on the table, and is making one final roll of the dice. If it doesn't work, by mid-1999 they will have no cash left. And it will prolong and deepen the current semi-equip cycle. We may have to wait till then (mid-1999) to see the bottoming in semi-equip orders, and true capitulation in the semi-equip stocks.
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