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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (35680)	7/10/2000 9:50:37 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

koreaherald.co.kr Chip exports post 26% annual growth Korea's chip exports posted a 25.8 percent year-on-year growth between January and May this year, totaling $9.5 billion, according to a trade group. Imports were $7.882 billion, a 24.8 percent increase, with the trade surplus being $1.62 billion, the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA) reported yesterday. The group forecast that Korea's chip industry would achieve record high export volume this year due to the surging demand for the Internet and high-capacity computers worldwide. "We expect both demand and price of DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips would continue to rise in 2000, boosting the revenue of Korean chipmakers," Lee Ki-man, a KSIA research team official, said. DRAMs are one of Korea's key export items with local producers holding more than 40 percent of the global market currently. Prices of DRAM chips have continued to rise since March, against the prevalent forecast that they would bottom out during the second quarter. 64M DRAMs were trading between $8.62 and $9.14 at international spot exchanges Thursday, compared with around $6 in March. 128M DRAMs were quoted between $17.25 and $18.29 on the same day. "Should the trend continue, the nation's chip exports this year would exceed the earlier-set goal of $23.5 billion," he said. The association readjusted chip export forecast to $25 billion, a 23.2 percent growth from $20.28 billion recorded last year. The price hike is attributed to ongoing boom in Internet, computer and wireless communications markets and ever-increasing memory capacity required by high-performance computing. Memory demand surged with the introduction of Microsoft's Windows 2000, which doubled the amount of DRAM chips per computer from eight to 16. "Supply shortage is worsening to a level that local producers have only 1-2 weeks of amount of supply, below the normal level of 3-4 weeks," he said. The shortage will not dramatically improve during the high season of the second half, causing DRAM prices to further rise or stabilize, the report said. It projected DRAM prices to remain in ranges of $9-11 for a 64M chip and $16-19 for a 128M chip during the second half. According to the report, 128M memory will emerge as the market mainstay replacing 64M chip starting the third quarter, as the next-generation chip's price per bit are already becoming lower than the latter. The strong DRAM market will bring in record high earnings for local chipmakers. The KSIA projected 6-7 trillion won in operational profits for Samsung Electronics, 1 trillion won for Hyundai Electronics Industries, and 20 billion won for Anam Semiconductor, a major chip assembly firm. The nonmemory sector will also be robust as the boom in mobile telecom and smart devices fuels demand, it said. But Korean firm's production capacity in the sector is still short of demand, a factor Internet, computer and wireless communications markets and ever-increasing memory capacity required by high-performance computing. Memory demand surged with the introduction of Microsoft's Windows 2000, which doubled the amount of DRAM chips per computer from eight to 16. "Supply shortage is worsening to a level that local producers have only 1-2 weeks of inventory. Updated: 07/08/2000 by Hwang Jang-jin Staff reporter