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

To: Marc Trombella who wrote (17070)	3/4/1998 9:52:00 PM
From: Taby	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

I seldom make predictions, however, I would say that AMAT will not drop more than 10% tomorrow, what do you say?

To: Marc Trombella who wrote (17070)	3/4/1998 11:29:00 PM
From: davesd	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 70976

Marc....look back and see the recent history on all the PC makers...they are all having a tough time...DELL is the only one who is doing good...and I think that is going to be short lived, especially as we get into PC price wars between CPQ, DELL, HP, etc. The product transition is always happening....INTC has used that excuse during the MMX transition and now for the PII. The problem is that the chips are getting too powerful and few applications are coming out that need more horse power. A regular pentium 200Mhz does just fine running MS office and browsers in corporate America. Window 98 is not going to need much more than what 95 needs...the current middle of the line PC's will do just fine. INTC was forced to introduce the PII before it's time...they never got a chance to milk the MMX stuff.....this was due to pressures from AMD who was boasting chips faster than INTC's. Therefore, we have PC's (300Mhz and higher)that are looking for a job....while the price for lower end 233Mhz chips is dropping like a rock to compete with AMD. I think INTC is going to have a tough time going forward....especially with the IBM/AMD deal. INTC margins will suffer over the next few quarters. As far as AMAT is concerned....it doesn't matter if it's INTC or AMD inside...as long as it's chips inside. dave

To: Marc Trombella who wrote (17070)	3/5/1998 12:20:00 AM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Marc, > Box makers are soaring right now. I believe Intel is the loser > now because of the product transition in place right now. It's not really a product transition as much as a PROCESS transition at the major boxmakers. Dell has really raised the bar on inventory costs by decreasing their on-hand inventories to 10 days of production or less. At HP we are trying to do the same thing, as is CPQ and (I imagine) everybody else in the industry, everyplace else in the world. When those kind of inventory reductions happen, it is felt as an immediate hit to revenues at the major suppliers. The long term trend is not necessarily disturbed, but in the short term they sell a little less as the box-makers soak up the inventory on hand. One of the reasons boxmakers (esp. DELL) are soaring is because of ever-increased efficiency, which unfortunately translates into some of the market variability getting transferred to suppliers. Expect similar in disk drives. mg