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To: Don Green who wrote (35881)	12/16/1999 11:54:00 AM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Orders for Japan's chip equipment triple in Oct Eighth consecutive rise shows demand recovering strongly from 1998 trough WORLDWIDE orders for chipmaking equipment produced in Japan more than tripled in October from a year earlier, the eighth straight increase after 15 months of decline, as chipmakers in the US and Taiwan boosted production capacity, industry figures showed. Orders for Japanese chipmaking equipment soared 227 per cent to 120.2 billion yen (S$1.96 billion) in October, said the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan. The rate of acceleration in orders shows demand for chip equipment is growing strongly as it recovers from a trough reached in October 1998. Orders are rising as chipmakers such as Samsung Electronics Co and Micron Technology Inc of the US, the world's No 1 and No 2 computer memory chipmakers, and the world's largest third-party chipmakers Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and United Microelectronics Corp add equipment in factories to boost production capacity. That's helping fuel recovery at companies such as Tokyo Electron Ltd, the world's second-largest maker of chipmaking euipment; Nikon Corp, the largest producer of machines used to print circuitry onto microchips; and Advantest Corp, the global leader in equipment to test memory chips. Demand is also growing as companies retool factories to be able to pack more information onto chips, and as video-game makers team up to develop and make chips for future generations of home video games and digital household electronics. Sony Corp and Toshiba Corp in March agreed to spend 120 billion yen to make chips for Sony's PlayStation 2 video-game player, while Nintendo Co is joining with International Business Machines Corp and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co to develop the successor to its Nintendo 64 game player. "We can say we are in a very strong upward trend," said Yuichi Honda, a Tokyo Electron senior managing director, last month. The world's second-largest maker of chip equipment saw its group net income leap more than fivefold in the six months ended Sept 30 from the same period last year. Chip equipment producers saw earnings plunge in the year ended March 31 as chipmakers in Japan, the US and South Korea reined in spending on equipment to limit losses. -- Bloomberg