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

To: Big Bucks who wrote (23258)	8/25/1998 10:23:00 AM
From: Ian@SI	Respond to of 70976

BB, 1. I believe that there are about 150 fabs at various stages of development at any particular time. i.e. - From a gleam in a chipmaker's eye to being ready to produce first silicon. 2. There's about 5-10 announcements in any given month about new fabs, additions to existing fabs, deletions from existing fabs or death of obsolete stuff. 3. I believe that, this year, global equipment sales have varied from about 2.5Bmonthly to about 3.5Bmonthly. or actually From about 3.5B in January to about 2.5B at midyear. The last forecast I saw was in the neighbourhood of 29B. I think one of Katherine Derbyshire's posts either contained the number or contained a link to the number. (But my memory is far from perfect) Yes, we're in a slowdown. Yes, I expect it to continue (Does that mean we're at the bottom? When many investors finally realize that the boom is over and now see only gloom going forward?) But I certainly don't expect new investment to stop. These decisions will continue to be made on a case by case basis by individual managers / officers of specific companies. That part of the process is almost impervious to global economic conditions. ... though giving stock options to the janitors is changing that. :-) FWIW, Ian