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

To: stockdoctor who wrote (14632)	1/13/1998 7:02:00 PM
From: Jeffrey Thompson Hunter	Respond to of 70976

Old LCD news..didn't see it though..http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/980112/informatio_2.html

To: stockdoctor who wrote (14632)	1/13/1998 7:50:00 PM
From: Big Bucks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

SD, I think you are somewhat correct, smaller capital equipment companies don't have the marketing or support infrastructure to compete on a large scale international basis. Niche companies, suffering from lack of capital and strong competition, will either fold up or be aquired by bigger, stronger companies that can benefit from the technologies and patents held by uni-dimensional small companies. Large chip companies are looking for integrated/complementary equipment sets that will enable the newest process technologies. It takes considerable effort, and management time, to deal with multiple vendors involved with chip fabrication. Dealing with a couple of large equipment vendors with a large installed equipment base and "world-wide" engineering and service support allows a fab to focus on a more controllable "problem set", and establish priorities in a simpler fashion and get results faster. It is easier to expect top of the line service/engineering support from a large well funded company with potentially hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment and sales at stake. Smaller companies usually don't have the immediate personnel or financial resources available to respond to a developing crisis. This is a case of where big is sometimes better, which is the "comfort zone" factor for the customer. You are correct that earnings of smaller companies with a high % of business exposure to Asian fabs may suffer, this is because they simply don't have the diversification or capital to compete at the highest levels required in todays' market, even if they have outstanding product(s). Consider these smaller companies, "Takeover candidates" in 98. Just my opinion, BB