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

To: davesd who wrote (13998)	12/31/1997 5:10:00 PM
From: Big Bucks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Dave, Good questions. Wish I had a crystal ball. My assessment is that Intel is on a push to upgrade or replace all their equipment in order to get to 0.25uM geometries. They have no choice, there is a glut of 0.35uM+ chips on the market, and they have to stay the leader in advanced technology, therefore they need to increase their investment and capture market share and lock in customers before other fabs can compete and drive down prices for 0.25uM chips. Market share and leadership is the life blood of Intel, I don't think they will let it ooze away without a transfusion. To do so could be "life threatening", after all Intel is a huge corporation with lots of overhead required to support the infrastructure of the business. They are "forced" to invest heavily to maintain/improve current fabs to stay in the black and maintain margins, probably at the expense of new fabs for the time being. BB