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

To: Big Bucks who wrote (10176)	10/31/1997 9:12:00 PM
From: davesd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Some mixed news of the net... Business is still a boomer New orders in October propelled the rate of growth in the electronics industry to a new high for this year, according to EBN's Quest index for October. For the 15th straight month, the Quest index checked in above 50, the level beginning industry growth, Ismini Scouras writes in EBN. Quest hit 57.8 in October, up from 56.7 in September. A big part of the reason was the PC, cellular phones, and networking gear, says TI economist Vladi Catto. Quest's new orders index soared to its highest reading in two-and-one-half years, climbing to 60.8 in October, and up from September's 57.6. Chip inventories averaged 2.2 weeks of production, a record low, says TI's Catto. In July, inventories were 2.4 weeks, and hit 4 weeks in 1987. SIA cuts '98 chip forecast The outlook for next year isn't looking as good as it did last May to the SIA. Its latest forecast this past week trims several percentages points off its growth forecast. In May it predicted '98 growth of 20.1% for a global market of $166 billion, but now it's only looking for a 16.8% increase to $162 billion, Rob Lineback writes in Semiconductor Business News. The new SIA forecast is the latest of several '98 chip outlooks that have been revised downward. The biggest argument is over DRAMs. Some downgraded forecasts because of continuing DRAM price erosion. In-Stat is looking for only a 13.5% increase next year because of lower DRAM ASPs. The SIA and others predict an end to the steep slide in DRAM prices. Dataquest, like the SIA, is predicting 20% growth in DRAM revenues for '98. Asian PC markets go south It's not just the financial markets that are in big trouble in Asia. So is the PC market, Mark Carroll reports in EE Times. "The situation now in southeast Asia is very bad," says Derek Brearley, PC manager at Twinhead. PC sales in some Asian countries have fallen by nearly half, sources say. "Sales in Southeast Asia are sluggish," admits an Intel official. For Cyrix, sales were described as "pretty dismal." Acer Computer says the PC slowdown is not likely to go away quickly. But a major shrinkage in Southeast Asian sales would not be "world ending" for global PC sales, says UBS Securities' Matt Cleary. "A 10% shrinkage would cut global growth from 16% this year to about 12%. Significant, but not catastrophic." Just what the Dr. ordered Yep. Another DRAM supplier from Taiwan! Macronix, Taiwan's largest vendor of EPROM and flash memory, is licensing Matsushita's 16-Mbit and 64-Mbit DRAM technology. It has started fabbing 16-Mbit DRAM on a foundry basis for the Japanese firm and will start turning out 64-Mbit DRAM next year, Mark LaPedus writes in EBN. But what the Taiwan chip maker really wants to do is combine its logic products with embedded memory within the next two years. "We need to run DRAMs in order to fulfill our long-term goal of developing embedded memories and systems-on-a-chip products," says CEO Miin Wu. Last year Matsushita was the 15th biggest IC maker with $2.3 billion in sales and Macronix had sales of $373 million. dave