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

To: Bob Howarth who wrote (35751)	7/14/2000 9:25:41 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 70976

Supply Shortage of PC Parts in Japan Worsens July 14, 2000 (TOKYO) -- The Japanese PC industry is suffering from the worst parts shortage experienced in recent history. Although the seasonal shopping season this summer will be in full swing shortly, users cannot necessarily find favorite models in a PC shop. They will find lots of notices at store fronts such as "under delivery" or "sold out." Every model suffers from inventory shortages, and stocks of notebook PCs and low-priced desktop models with a CD-RW drive are nearly exhausted. The faster the models sell, the more serious their inventory shortages become. The industry has never experienced such a situation caused concurrently by short supplies, exhausted stocks and delayed shipments, observers say. The current PC shortage is attributed to the rapid increase of PC purchasers. More or less, every PC manufacturer is enjoying brisk sales. Neither PC manufacturers nor parts manufacturers could predict the rapid PC market growth before the undersupply occurred. It is now too late to increase production to catch up with demand because parts procurements are an increasingly difficult task. According to some PC manufacturers, various kinds of parts are in short supply -- CD-RW drives, CPUs and flat CRT displays. NEC Corp. has promptly worked out measures. It shipped PCs with a conventional CD-ROM drive instead of a DVD-ROM drive to specified retailers in June in order to avoid the shortage of DVD-ROM drives. In July, it added new models to Valuestar U desktop series, but they are complete with a convex display instead of a flat display. NEC decided to give higher priority to meeting the demand than to waiting for part supplies. Nonetheless, the PC shortage seems to continue. PCs share some parts with mobile phones, video game machines and other digital home electronics, and the shared parts have been receiving an in-rush of orders. Intel KK said that stocks are cleared immediately because of strong demand. (Nikkei Personal Computing)