Word: semiconductor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Nowhere is this process more sharply defined than in the $32.5 billion global semiconductor industry. Since 1980, more than 200 new U.S. semiconductor companies have been formed as the development of microchip technology has surged forward. Yet the U.S. share of world semiconductor production has slipped from 57.2% to 39.4% during this period, while Japanese companies have expanded their market share from...
...down the U.S. -- big firms or small? Two scholars came to sharply different conclusions in essays published earlier this year by the Harvard Business Review. Supply-Sider George Gilder, author of the book The Spirit of Enterprise, cites the roaring success of several of the newest Silicon Valley semiconductor firms -- including Chips & Technologies and Cypress Semiconductor -- as proof that such start-ups are the best hope for continued U.S. economic growth. In what Gilder calls the "law of the microcosm," he contends that the use of computers has given individuals more opportunity to innovate. Says he: "As circuitry is compressed...
...Charles Ferguson, a former IBM analyst who is now a research associate at M.I.T.'s Center for Technology, Policy and Industrial Development, argues that the U.S. semiconductor industry is collapsing because start-ups have siphoned off talented engineers from larger firms. Example: in 1981 a group of Intel executives started Seeq Technology (1987 revenues: $44.6 million) to develop sophisticated memory chips. Four years later, three Seeq employees specializing in such chips quit to form their own company, Atmel...
...people. Crop failures, farm bankruptcies, high food costs, transportation disruption, municipal water shortages -- bad as all these are, they are familiar difficulties. Now there is the threat of other, more subtle damage. In California's Silicon Valley, a plan to cut pure reservoir supplies sent a shock through the semiconductor industry. Ionizing mineral-laden well water to the proper purity would send the water-treatment bills for just six firms from $2.1 million to $4.9 million, threatening their competitive positions and jobs. The San Francisco water authorities were successfully lobbied to hold off for this year...
...case of semiconductors, Government action may have been too timid and tardy. In 1986 U.S. manufacturers complained that the Japanese were unfairly "dumping" computer memory chips -- exporting them at prices lower than production costs. As a result, Japan signed an agreement to stop the practice and open its market to American semiconductors. Last year the U.S. charged that Japan had not lived up to the agreement, and imposed higher tariffs against several of its products, including power tools and laptop computers. But by that time the Japanese had already come to dominate the American market for memory chips. U.S. manufacturers...