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

To: Joseph Beltran who wrote (49728)	7/24/2001 6:59:48 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Taiwan's Electronics Sector Shows Negative Growth in June July 24, 2001 (TAIPEI) -- Net sales in June 2001 for listed companies in Taiwan's electronics sector (excluding those that trade stock issues on the over-the-counter market) fell 16.5 percent year-on-year and rose 2.4 percent over the previous month. Total sales for the six months to June declined 1.5 percent over the same period the previous year. Although the sector recovered to positive growth in June compared with the previous month, the decline relative to the same month in the previous year was larger in June than in January to May, resulting in negative growth year-on-year for the whole six months. However, June is traditionally a quiet time in the Taiwanese market and, with the exception of a few companies such as VIA Technologies Inc., most electronics companies performed fairly much as expected. In the applied devices segment, the trends for personal computer (PC)-related products differed for each type of product. While sales of desktop PCs slumped overall, the figures for laptops differed widely among vendors, and motherboards took a slight turn for the better. In the area of mobile phones, some component manufacturers that had showed signs of bottoming out in May dipped even lower in June and are still facing prospects of adjustments. Even thin-film transistor liquid-crystal displays (TFT-LCDs), the only category to have performed favorably in the applied devices segment, recorded lower sales in June than in the previous month due to factors such as a flattening in monitor demand. In the semiconductors segment, while the downtrend has apparently ended for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (TSMC), United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) is still experiencing declining sales. The other point of note in this segment at present is the quite serious stagnation that DRAM makers are all suffering. Demand for finished products is weak across the board, including PCs and mobile phones. It should also be noted that it is not the set makers that are overstocked but the device makers, including manufacturers of semiconductors and passive devices. This is apparent from the moves of Taiwan makers, and of the OEM customers in Taiwan that manufacture products under the brand of a maker in an advanced country, to keep stock levels for parts or products lower than their average levels in previous years. From now until the end of August, orders will reach a peak for PCs and consumer-related products to be sold during the busy period from September up to year-end. It will be interesting to see how many orders are actually received by semiconductor makers and other device-related manufacturers in July and August. Related reports: - Sales at UMC Continue to Drop; TSMC's Business May Have Hit Bottom - Depression Looms Over Taiwanese Mobile Phone Production - Taiwan's Electronics Sector Sees Poorer PC Sales in May (Yasuo Nakane, senior analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd. Taipei, Special to Nikkei Microdevices)