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

To: StanX Long who wrote (61992)	3/13/2002 1:04:20 AM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Fabless firms expect surge, but others are skeptical By Crista Souza EBN (03/12/02 13:51 p.m. EST) siliconstrategies.com With little consensus as to how much, if any, market recovery to expect in 2002, fabless semiconductor suppliers are apparently marching to their own beat. According to results from the Fabless Semiconductor Association's annual Wafer and Packaging Demand Survey, released last week, chip companies think they will need a whopping 78% more silicon wafers this year than in 2001. Market watchers attributed the sharp demand increase to a large survey population of start-ups that expect to enter volume production this year, as well as companies that may be overestimating their potential share of the total available market. Wall Street analysts aren't convinced there will be a notable increase in semiconductor demand, beyond inventory replenishment. Eric Ross of Thomas Weisel Partners LLP, New York, projects a 1.6% rise in revenue over 2001. A less-optimistic Dan Niles of Lehman Brothers & Co. in San Francisco believes 2002 revenue will be somewhere between flat and a 5% decrease. “It's not an inventory problem anymore, it's a demand issue,” Niles said. Whether the fabless group's forecasted need for 4.5 million CMOS wafers in 2002 proves too optimistic or right on target, there appears to be no urgency to add new capacity. The foundry industry is already in good shape to handle the upside, given that many state-of-the-art factories sat nearly empty last year, while foundries continued to invest in future capacity, said Joanne Itow, foundry analyst at Semico Research Corp., Phoenix.