Difficulties in predicting electronics industry $$$ numbers..........
sumnet.com
Excerpt:
Memory producers have been vigorously moving to smaller effective geometries as a way to effort to improve yields and profitability. Although the moves have been effective in lowering costs, producing more chips for less has only exacerbated the overcapacity and pricing problems. "More die shrinks occurred over the past 18 to 24 months than happened historically," Feldhan noted.
Looking into the coming year, chip makers are expected to continue reducing costs and improving yields. Just a year or two ago, experts in lithography had predicted that 248nm deep UV steppers would be unable to push below 0.25-micron linewidths, but the industry used those systems to reach 0.18-micron last year, and Micron Technology expects to be in production at 0.15-micron during this quarter using 248nm machines, said VLSI's Hutcheson. "That's why we had a 4x increase in capacity with very little equipment expenditure."
Overcapacity also extended to the dedicated foundries, which found themselves stuck with a third of their capacity laying fallow. That translated to lower chip prices in non-memory devices, as fabless chip vendors engaged in price wars, depressing prices and overall sales growth even in value-added markets.
Some had predicted that the growing pervasiveness of semiconductors would banish, or at least soften the sharp swings that have characterized the chip industry over its history. But the opposite has happened.
"One of major reasons it's difficult to forecast the industry is that the fortunes of the semiconductor industry are now tied to the overall economic well-being," said Joseph Grenier, vice president at Dataquest, San Jose. "Before, it was relatively immune from the worldwide economic situations. We had forecast a relatively good year for '98, but all of a sudden, the Asian economic crisis took everything down with it."
"We're now the largest employer in U.S. or Japanese economy, so swings in the macro economy really affect us more than we've seen in the past," said VLSI's Hutcheson.
"As the industry has grown in size, it's become more difficult to understand how macroeconomics affect it," added Doug Andrey, director of finance for the Semiconductor Industry Association. "There are so many exogenous variables. As the PC becomes more consumer-oriented, for example, we have to take a closer look at consumer spending patterns." |
