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To: Glenn D. Rudolph who wrote (101974)	4/23/2000 11:31:00 AM
From: H James Morris	Respond to of 164684

Glenn, Some investors in the USA just think of Canon as a company who just manufactures camera's...not true. > Tokyo, April 19 (Bloomberg) -- Nikon Corp., one of Japan's biggest chip equipment makers, said it aims to boost sales of the machines used to make semiconductor chips -- known as steppers -- by 40 percent on brisk demand from domestic and foreign chipmakers looking to increase their output of computer chips. Tokyo-based Nikon said it will probably sell about 400 steppers in the year ending March 2001, up 40 percent from the 290 units in the previous period. Nikon said its consolidated revenue in the year ending March 2001 will probably rise 25 percent to 450 billion yen from about 360 billion yen in the previous period, thanks to higher sales of steppers and digital cameras. Chip-producing equipment makers like Nikon and rival Canon Inc. are benefiting from surging demand for semiconductors such as flash memory chips used in digital cameras and mobile phones. The flash memory market is expected to surge 35 percent to $7.4 billion between 2000 and 2002, according to a World Semiconductors Trade Statistics report. ``Before March this year, our orders for the year ending March 2001 exceeded our production capacity' for i-line laser beam steppers and excimer laser beam steppers, Nikon spokesman Norio Matsuoka said. I-line laser beam steppers are used to mass- produce chips, whereas excimer laser beam steppers are designed to make detailed modifications of circuit patterns on chips. A stepper works by imprinting the circuit, which determines a chip's function, onto a photoreceptive coating on a silicon wafer. Besides those two kinds of steppers, Nikon also makes g-line and h-line laser beam steppers for liquid crystal displays. Nikon has sold 45 units in the year ended in March, company spokesman Masayuki Hatori said. Flash memory chips, mainly used in mobile phones, generally don't require detailed modifications, raising demand for i-line laser beams steppers, which are cheaper and more profitable, Matsuoka said. Nikon shares rose as much as 180 yen, or 5 percent, to 3,780. Apr/19/2000 2:49