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Technology Stocks : Semi Equipment Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (9805)	5/14/2003 10:54:06 AM
From: Big Bucks	Respond to of 95622

Brian, I hired in to AMAT in late 1982, during that recession. US companies were struggling, the 8085-6 processor was new, 64kb memory was state of the art, the best personal computer was the Commodore 64 and the Apple. Japanese companies wanted to dominate the growing global chip market and invested heavily to build new fabs thru the mid-late 80's. The Japanese market was a huge buyer of AMAT equipment at that time, so big that AMAT opened a Japanese technology sales/demo center to be close to the customer. Jim Morgan wrote his book regarding how a US company could compete and win in a closed Japanese market. During that time, the Japanese, European, and US markets were 120 degrees out of phase, such that when US and European companies were not buying equipment, the Japanese were. The "out of phase" phenomenon, was perfect for AMAT because as 1 market's sales declined another was ramping up which fueled the globalization growth of AMAT. Once the Koreans and Taiwanese fabs started competing with Japan and were producing for lower cost it spelled doom for Japanese companies because the fab labor/operating cost for Japanese chip companies is higher.... BB makers