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

To: Jerome who wrote (30616)	5/26/1999 9:55:00 PM
From: Katherine Derbyshire	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

For what it's worth, I've been arguing for several months that applications other than PCs are where the best future growth prospects lie. I've also been talking for months (maybe over a year at this point) about falling ASPs as a threat to chip company (and therefore equipment company) revenues. So have many of the industry analysts who I rely on as sources. The Forrest Report makes more extreme predictions on specifics than most are willing to, but I'd have to agree with their general scenario. Am I credible enough to get your attention? Katherine

To: Jerome who wrote (30616)	5/26/1999 11:14:00 PM
From: Gottfried	Respond to of 70976

jerome, re >I would much rather see a report by Brian Kerecz or some other site visitor. It would have more creditability.<< It's also much easier to beat up on him if he's wrong.<G> G.

To: Jerome who wrote (30616)	5/27/1999 12:37:00 AM
From: Robert O	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

OT 4 sure Re: Some where [sic] about 1915 it was predicted that horses would be retired to Zoo's as curiosity items. Yet there are more horses in America today than there were during the Civil War. How about this arcane factoid: Since the domestication of horses around 4000 B.C. and reindeer a few thousand years later, no large European mammal has been added to our repertoire of successful domestication. Reindeer alone among the world's 41 deer species were successfully domesticated. Territorial behavior, flight reflexes, or both eliminated the other 40 species as candidates. Only reindeer have the necessary tolerance of intruders and gregarious, non-territorial behavior. Anyone notice the herd-mentality market tie-in? Take one: Tolerance and openness get you enslaved (albeit with a nice comfortable lifestyle to come). RO

To: Jerome who wrote (30616)	5/27/1999 11:32:00 AM
From: Proud_Infidel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Thursday May 27, 6:41 am Eastern Time FOCUS-NEC opts for chip investment despite doubts (Adds analysis, earnings for Hitachi, Mitsubishi) By Yuko Inoue TOKYO, May 27 (Reuters) - Japanese electronics giant NEC, reeling from restructuring costs and sagging profits, on Thursday announced a plan to raise semiconductor investment despite the industry's cloudy outlook. NEC, Japan's biggest semiconductor maker, said it would spend 40 billion yen ($325 million) to boost output of computer memory chips, known as dynamic random-access memories (DRAMs), mainly at its British plant. The news comes amid a rush of announcements of losses and restructuring charges by Japanese chip and computer makers, including Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric as they try to pare their operating costs to cope with the sluggish environment. Earnings were weighed down by heavy losses in the semiconductor business -- estimated to total a combined 400 billion yen -- at top six chip makers in 1998/99, more than triple their losses the previous year. ''The investment in DRAM facilities at this time means we are not retreating from the front line,'' an NEC spokesman said. NEC is dubbed one of the global DRAM Big Four, which includes Micron Technology of the United States, and South Korea's Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Electronics Industries. Analysts say NEC made a difficult decision at a time when the economic and market outlooks are unclear. ''It's a delicate time and NEC made a difficult, risky decision,'' said Mami Indo, an analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research. Japanese electronics makers' capital investment plans are closely watched as a clue to Japan's future economic performance. But NEC's move runs counter to the stance of other big Japanese chip makers, who are only raising DRAM output at consignment producers in Taiwan, as part of their attempts to shift their focus to more complex chip products tailor-made to customers' needs. Hitachi on Thursday posted a consolidated net loss of 338.79 billion yen for the year that ended on March 31, its biggest loss ever. Mitsubishi Electric recorded a net loss of 44.55 billion yen, against a 106 billion yen net loss the previous year. Both firms expect their fortunes to change for the better in the current business year as smaller losses in their chip divisions are expected to substantially raise their bottom lines. Hitachi's senior executive managing director, Yoshiki Yagi, said the company expects its loss in the chip business to shrink to less than 10 billion yen this business year from 100 billion yen in 1998/99 as a result of cost-cutting steps. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter analyst Takatoshi Yamamoto said he was not optimistic about the firms' earnings prospects this year. He cited more restructuring costs, murky outlooks for consumption and capital investment, and weak demand in emerging markets. The price of the current mainly 64 megabit DRAM chips, meanwhile, has resumed its decline since February. Yamamoto said NEC, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Fujitsu and Toshiba posted combined restructuring charges of some 440 billion yen in the last business year. ''But the key to a real rebound is whether they can take drastic restructuring measures at home,'' said Yamamoto. Their aggressive restructuring efforts caused a sharp rally in the electronics sector in the Tokyo market earlier this year. But since April, concerns over this year's business results and investors' cautious stance to see how much of the restructuring measures will be actually carried out have put downward pressure on their share prices, he said. biz.yahoo.com