Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Many market watchers and company executives agreed on one point: China will be the key to the industry's future.
"No other country has such gigantic unused potential in terms of both demand and engineering capacity, executives said. "China is developing into a key player," Dunn, Doug Dunn, president and chief executive of the Dutch equipment producer ASML (Veldhoven, The Netherlands)said.
David Wang, executive vice president of the equipment supplier Applied Materials (Santa Clara, Calif.) said he also saw a significant shift in the way the global electronics industry coordinates its activities with an eye toward China. "In the next decade, there will be a clear move of the semiconductor industry to China," said Wang. Klaus Rinnen, principal analyst for market researchers Gartner Group, agreed that China is developing itself as a "peak rider."
Still, other market watchers are already trying to dampen expectations about the Chinese market as the first signs of slowing consumption appear. Some think China could generate the next industry bubble. "China is a little like a Trojan horse," said Malcolm Penn, managing director of market researcher Future Horizons (Sevenoaks, U.K.).
China is a country that tends toward excess capacity, Penn warned. "The size of the investments makes me worry. If it continues like this, it will trigger the next recession."
Rinnen also warned against exaggerated expectations. "Yes, there is enormous gigantic market potential there. But 90 percent of it must first be developed."
By: DocMemory
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