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

To: Paul V. who wrote (29843)	4/30/1999 12:08:00 AM
From: Stefan	Respond to of 70976

INTC is not in the DRAM business they do make FLASH memory. TXN sold their DRAM interest to MU. MOT will get out of memory business once they compleat the restructuring they are going through. As to the 128 and 256 MB chips, 128 has been available for a while and number of manufacturers are increasing their output. Only thing that will twist consumer hand to pay up more for memory is necessity. There is still too much capacity in DRAM business, I know of one brand new fab fully equipped that is sealed off and no one wants to buy it. As I stated there will be a new application that will cause a new boon in semi business but it is not here yet. So keep your eyes open. "Hope is mother of stupid"

To: Paul V. who wrote (29843)	4/30/1999 12:37:00 AM
From: Katherine Derbyshire	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

>>What if Intc, Txn, Mot, and other Semiconductor manufacturers just quit making the 16 and 64 Ram chip and only produce the 128 or 256 Ram chip. Won't this force the consumer to purchase the profit making chip. << INTC, TXN, and MOT don't make memory, or at least not significant amounts of it. More to the point, the memory market is composed of several companies who are all trying to kill each other, and memory chips are essentially interchangeable. The minute company A starts to make money by switching to 128 Mb chips, everyone else will switch, too. That just moves the same oversupply problems into the next generation (and is what seems to be happening now with the 16-64 transition). If company A tries to increase prices on 128 Mb chips too much, because no one else is making them yet, then all the (price-driven) boxmakers just stick with the smaller chips from other vendors. (Yes, the DRAM companies do make money sometimes, because the switches don't happen overnight. But when the group as a whole makes real money for any length of time, new companies start joining the party.) INTC isn't a good comparison. They have a high-value-added product that the boxmakers have to buy from them. The memory makers have a commodity product. Katherine