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To: Fabeyes who wrote (41787)	12/29/1998 10:56:00 PM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 53903

Japan's giants project their semiconductor divisions will log red ink for the fiscal year that ends in March, mainly because of DRAM price erosion. Such companies as Hitachi Ltd.-which forecasts a roughly $1 billion operating loss-and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. say they have drastically restructured their operations to weather the downturn. But semiconductor analyst Michito Kimura at International Data Corp. Japan believes the moves haven't been drastic enough. Whereas"Texas Instruments withdrew from the DRAM business by completely disposing of fabs," he noted,"Japanese companies, in most cases, maintain fabs after reconstruction. When fabs remain, the most costly personnel expenses remain." Indeed, Japan's giants could be ill-positioned to take advantage of the DRAM supply/demand ratio's projected return to balance later this year, analysts said. DRAM demand "will surpass supply by the end of the second quarter or the third quarter for 16-Mbit DRAMs and by the end of third quarter for 64 Mbit DRAMs," said Masahiro Suzuki, a senior industry analyst at Dataquest Japan K.K. But Japan's major DRAM vendors have almost given up the production of 16-Mbit DRAMs, shifting those lines to logic chips. "There are no companies [in Japan] that can increase production of 16-Mbit DRAMs," said Suzuki. And nearly two years' worth of budget cuts may make it difficult to ramp production of 64-Mbit DRAMs as well, he said. NEC, the largest producer of DRAMs in Japan, has established monthly production levels of 10 million units for 64-Mbit DRAMs. But the company is focusing its DRAM growth efforts on advanced 128-Mbit parts, with a target of 5 million units per month by year's end. Analysis: For '99, Asia still casts clouds over chip forecasts eet.com

To: Fabeyes who wrote (41787)	12/30/1998 1:18:00 PM
From: Bipin Prasad	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 53903

Very interesting. Is Lowrey working for any company, yet? It's been 2 1/2 yrs since Aug 96. later, InSook

To: Fabeyes who wrote (41787)	12/31/1998 1:10:00 PM
From: Kerry Phineas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 53903

Fabeyes, I read that article, and was impressed by a number of the people at the company. Simplot is somewhat shady, imo, but still impressive nonetheless.