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

To: Proud_Infidel who wrote (21152)	7/6/1998 9:36:00 PM
From: Ramsey Su	Respond to of 70976

Can anyone in the business explain whether this is good or bad? It looks like more bear food to me, 64 DRAM price wars to start soon. Ramsey Mitsubishi Elec (6503) To Buy New Shares In Taiwan Chipmaker TOKYO (Nikkei)-Mitsubishi Electric Corp. will purchase some 700 million New Taiwan dollars worth of new shares in Powerchip Semiconductor Corp., out of a 6.3 billion New Taiwan dollar issue to be floated by the Taiwanese chipmaker, company sources said Monday. It will also license circuit-etching technology for advanced semiconductors to the Taiwanese concern. The measures are designed to help Mitsubishi Electric procure chips at lower costs and its loss-making semiconductor division turn a profit. The depressed memory chip market has made it difficult to increase capital spending in the division. Powerchip Semiconductor plans to use the capital from the stock issue to mass-produce 64-megabit DRAM chips. Mitsubishi Electric will also supply technology to etch 0.18-micron-wide circuits for 256-megabit memory chips and relax the payment terms on the licensing fee. Other Japanese chipmakers such as Toshiba Corp. (6502) and Fujitsu Ltd. (6702) have also consigned semiconductor output to Taiwanese concerns. After posting remarkable growth in 1997, some local chipmakers have started to see profits deteriorate. If the situation continues, more Taiwanese firms might seek financial assistance from their Japanese counterparts, industry analysts say. (The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Tuesday morning edition)