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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stitch who wrote (7838)	1/10/1999 8:48:00 PM
From: Step1	Respond to of 9980

Thought I would post a quick personal account... I live in Japan and have done so for the last 6 years. All at the same spot so I am starting to know quite a few people in the neighborhood... Anyway, was shopping for books this weekend and heard my name, turned around and saw my second door neighbor in the department store uniform I was shopping at .. . A little surprised I ask what had brought here to work here (she has had her own DTP and creative advertising studio for a long time, doing mostly subcontracts for bigger agencies, she works from home and has practically no overhead...) and she told me that from 97 to 98 business went down by 50% ... And going into 99 the trend had not abated ... Cut in half again. Scary she said, so she had to find a job as salesclerk ... Life is tough... Over the holidays, everywhere (every party ) you went to , you heard stories of people being put on "listora" (restructuring) often case a transfer far away with a pay cut and very little in the way of moving expenses or anything... Small businesses are failing left and right ... I need some second hand tools to do some home repair myself, and when I went to the "pawn shops" and "recycle shopes" around my area , the places were full of whatever you wanted to buy. These are not expensive tools at all, so the fact that they are showing up in pawn shops means some people are really cleaning the garage to get some money or construction is no longer an occupation that pays well I supppose. Sorry no charts or figures available.... (g) stephan

To: Stitch who wrote (7838)	1/12/1999 1:19:00 PM
From: Michael Sphar	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9980

"the cup is half full" view for semiconductors and fabs: <<"The industry completely ignored the warning signs in 1997, and it kept investing at 225 miles per hour," said Jean-Philippe Dauvin, group vice president and chief economist at ST Microelectronics, who presented an industry forecast before the annual meeting. According to the European chip executive, the industry ended up closing 26 wafer fabs in 1998, or about 10% of its capacity, after the false recovery signs of 1997. And, chip makers canceled or postponed $38 billion of planned investments, he added. >> Taken from: semibiznews.com At about $1B per fab that represents another 35 fabs cancelled or postponed, resulting in a significant 25% cumulative haircut off planned fab capacity when added to the 10% closure number cited above. Now we have growth news looking forward: Tuesday January 12, 9:06 am Eastern Time Company Press Release Semiconductor Equipment Manufacturers Appear Poised for Recovery New consumer and industrial technologies driving growth PEBBLE BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 12, 1999--After a three-year sales drought, including a steep downturn in 1998, the semiconductor industry appears poised for recovery in mid to late 1999... biz.yahoo.com This article calls for a return to historic 18.6% growth rate in the coming months and years. With much of the industry dependent on contracted fab in Taiwan and Singapore, and fab gestation about 12 - 24 months, this could lead to capacity constraint situations by the end of this year. Possibly customer based allocations of supply. semibiznews.com Meanwhile, chaebol arm-wrestling continues, Hyundai looking to consume LG Semicon capacity and become one of the largest DRAM fabbers in the world: semibiznews.com The worm has turned.