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Technology Stocks : LSI Corporation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Doug who wrote (7806)	11/14/1997 9:19:00 PM
From: shane forbes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25814

Hi Doug: Part of the reason LU is # 1 has to do with the "captive market". I think LSI is still # 1 in merchant market ASIC supplier. LU supplies to the divisions of its old parent AT&T - that's why their numbers look so much higher than LSI. Having said that the irritating thing about all of this is that LSI grew slower than the other companies in a segment that it supposedly dominates. Translated: they are losing market share. Or: perhaps other companies non-leading-edge technology is being put to better use than LSI's leading-edge technology which still has only niches at this point. The other thing to keep in mind is that even though LSI has about 50% cell based ASICs only about 30% of this number (or about 200 million) is library based (COREWARE). COREWARE is where LSI has an advantage over most companies but people tend to think that 100% of LSI's stuff is COREWARE. It's not! Only 15% is now COREWARE. So even if this explodes and it should the other 85% will still need to grow fast for LSI to show big increases in revenue. The disappointment in all of this is that it appears that the designs still can't be made "efficiently" (translated: cheaply) enough to make customers put LSI's fab capacity to good use. (and the usual other reasons - DVD acceptance blah blah blah...) [Data: '96 numbers and H&Q report.] RE: Mitsubishi - that looks promising. But considering that LSI still can't find good uses for its 0.18mic capacity I think we have time. One of the reasons I was so optimistic about 1998 was the cost reductions that would come with the shrink. Especially in consumer chips this is crucial. The delay is a real setback. RE: