Here's one more story on the ever spiraling downward movement of the Hi-Tech Industry...

The Economy is getting Ugly....
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JUL 17, 2001

Several Rough Years Are Seen for Semiconductor Industry

SAN FRANCISCO, July 16 — Semiconductor equipment makers will see their industry decline by more than a third this year and will not surpass last year's sales levels until 2004, an industry trade association predicted today.

The forecast by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International dragged down the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index 6 percent and indicated the chip- making equipment industry was mired in its deepest slump ever.

The association predicted that the industry would decline 35 percent, to $31 billion, this year compared with 2000, the sharpest one-year drop on record. Demand waned after last year's record pace, when sales increased 87 percent, to $47.7 billion worldwide.

"Chip makers simply stopped ordering new high-tech manufacturing equipment," Stanley T. Myers, the association's chief executive, said here at Semicon West, an annual industry gathering.

Applied Materials (news/quote), the world's largest equipment maker, today warned that it saw no immediate end to the slowdown.

The company, based in Santa Clara, Calif., refused to comment on its prediction last quarter that recovery would begin in October, but it indicated the decline in sales had been steeper than previously believed.

"The near term is not a good situation," Joseph R. Bronson, the company's chief financial officer, told a gathering of analysts. He called the downturn the worst he had ever seen.


More at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/17/technology/ebusiness/17CHIP.html?pagewanted=print

Yep the semi industry is in the shitter, but don't bother telling that to Intel investors.  Volume exceeded 100,000,000 shares today on it.  Stupid bastards were BUYING.  WHY?!?

Intel's a good company, even though I don't like how they rip consumers off with their Pentium brand name, but my god their profits are down 76%, they're locked in a price war, the market is awful and projected to stay that way for at least a year, and yet people are clamoring to buy Intel at $30 a share.  Unbelievable.

And why's there a buy signal out for Telecom these days for God's sake?  There will be several telecom corporate implosions after Jan. 1, 2002 if profitability doesn't magically occur soon.

Go Intel!!!!

Thanks for chipping the PIII 850mhz notebook I just picked up!