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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kirk © who wrote (7454)	10/8/2003 1:56:10 PM
From: Sam Citron	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25522

Only where space is at a premium do folks pay for the costly multi layer, robot loaded PCBs Strike two. Land is the other input where China has a material cost advantage to every other chip producing country in the world. So if you are building a fab, you can get cheaper land and labor in China. I'd like to see a comparison of the cost of capital in the semi industry in China to other countries. Do you think lower yields would result? To some extent, yes. But there might be somewhat more flexibility in the labor component of the production process, as human capital investment, at least in China, is not as "lumpy" as capital equipment investment. With a more labor intensive approach, you can add or reduce labor inputs more easily than you can slow down an automated fab that is designed for 24x7 production.