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

To: AlienTech who wrote (9923)	10/28/1997 8:23:00 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

10/28 Dataquest downgrades Asian chip growth TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Amid a financial crisis in Asia and the global stock markets, Dataquest Inc. has revised its forecast downwards for the total growth in Asia-Pacific's chip business by nearly 6% this year. Dataquest originally forecasted that Asia-Pacific's total IC business would grow by 15% to $34 billion in 1997, but the market research company now predicts the region will only achieve 8% growth, to $32 billion, this year. The forecast reflects Asia-Pacific's financial crisis, stock market collapses, currency problems, and an otherwise sluggish DRAM business, according to Daniel Heyler, a senior analyst with Dataquest Asia-Pacific Co. Ltd. in Hong Kong. Even more troublesome is the region's economic crisis is not a short-term problem. ''Most people believe Asia-Pacific will take 12 to 18 months to work itself out of these problems,'' Heyler said. There are some exceptions to the rule. ''Greater China remains stable,'' Helyer said, ''but there's problems in Japan, South Korea, as well as Southeast Asia.'' So far, however, multinational chip makers remain causiously optimistic about their businesses in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. Stanly Huang, Intel Corp.'s Asia-Pacific marketing manager, here today said that the U.S. chip giant is experiencing strong demand for its Pentium II processors in the region despite the economic problems. Huang, however, declined to comment on the impact of the region's crisis on Intel's own chip business. ''I don't want to comment about that,'' he said, at a press event in Taipei today. Today, Intel launched a $10 million advertising campaign to push its Pentium II chip in Asia-Pacific. Others remain somewhat bullish. Today, Japan's NEC Corp. announced that its total IC sales hit 600 billion yen for the first half of its fiscal year, ended Sept. 30, a 13% jump compared to the like period a year ago. For the second half of this year, NEC predicts that its total IC sales will hit 660 billion yen, a 16% jump over the like period last year. For its fiscal year, NEC said that its total IC sales will be about 1.26 trillion yen, a 15% growth rate over last year. Group sales for NEC grew 8.4% to 1.972 trillion yen for the six-month period, compared to 1.82 trillion yen. NEC's net profit jumped 15% to 35.76 billion yen, from 31.31 billion yen. However, citing stiff competition and falling margins, Japan's Toshiba Corp. announced that its net profit fell 23% to 22.45 billion yen for the first half of its fiscal year, ended Sept. 30. For the year, Toshiba predicts a net profit of 54 billion yen, a 10% drop compared to the like period a year ago.