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To: DJBEINO who wrote (4851)	4/26/1999 12:16:00 PM
From: DJBEINO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9582

INTERVIEW-Taiwan seen DRAM industry's rising star SINGAPORE, April 26 (Reuters) - Taiwan is threatening to grab dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) market share from Japan and will pose strong competition to South Korea in the coming years, a senior executive from research firm Dataquest said on Monday. Japan and South Korea "shared" the global DRAM market in 1995 but Taiwan could be the third among the world leaders by 2000 and 2001, J.H. Son, vice president of Dataquest's Asia Pacific semiconductor group, told Reuters at the sidelines of a semiconductor seminar in Singapore. Dataquest is a unit of U.S. computer information specialist Gartner Group Inc (NYSE:IT). "Japan's share will shrink and Taiwan's will grow," Son said. Taiwan, the rising star in the DRAM market, was also likely to catch up with South Korea soon. In comparing Taiwan and South Korea, Son said South Korea had the initial advantage as it had entered the capital-intensive semiconductor industry earlier with sufficient funds when small- and medium-sized Taiwanese firms did not have the liquidity to make a big impact. However, the size of Taiwanese firms had grown along with the island's economic growth while there were only a limited number of big companies in South Korea, Son said. "There are so many (Taiwanese) companies growing. Taiwan's semiconductor companies will continue to grow quickly in the next few years and they may catch up with South Korea," Son said. Asia's economic crisis, which started in July 1997, also helped Taiwan's rise in the industry, Son said. "South Korea suffered badly from the crisis, take capital spending for example," he said. Taiwan has been comparatively less affected by Asia's financial crisis, reporting a 4.83 percent rise in gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 1998. According to Dataquest data, three Taiwanese semiconductor firms, United Microelectronics Corp (UMC) (TW:2303), Winbond Electronics Corp (TW:2344) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) (TW:2330), along with their joint ventures were among the top 10 capital spenders in 1998. TSMC is Taiwan's leading microchip maker and a world leader in made-to-order "foundry" chipmaking. Capital spending by South Korean firms plunged to under US$3 billion in 1998 from nearly US$8 billion in 1996, while the spending from their Taiwanese counterparts rose to some US$6 billion from over US$4 billion, Dataquest data showed. "One of the strengths is Taiwan has many good engineers in Silicon Valley, so they have good connections with Silicon Valley and they can share ideas and design," he said. "Taiwan's future is very good," Son said.