Word: chip
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Malmgren, a trade consultant in Washington, D.C. Japanese companies last year garnered about 33% of all world chip sales, up from 27% in 1980, and not far behind the U.S. share of 43%. Says an official of the Electronic Industries Association of Japan: "The chip war must be more and more intensified, as time goes by, between Japan and the U.S. That's the industrial destiny of both...
...Japanese deny such charges, arguing that their prices are low because of efficient, highly automated production lines. The Japanese obtain higher yields than most U.S. companies. This means that a smaller number of Japanese chips have to be discarded because of defects. Many U.S. semiconductor customers admit that price is not the only reason they buy Japanese. Says an executive of a major computer company: "When it comes to memory-chip quality, the Japanese have no serious competition...
...Government's responses to the Japanese chip challenge have so far been indecisive and sometimes contradictory. Though the Administration has not directly demanded that Japan reduce its exports, Commerce Department officials late last year began informal discussions with the Japanese about the problems they were creating for the U.S. semiconductor industry. In February, Administration officials let it be known that the White House was considering putting restrictions on Japanese chip sales in the U.S. The device was to be a rarely used law that allows the President to curb imports deemed to be a threat to national security...
...about the time that news of the White House deliberations appeared in the American press, the Japanese government warned its chip manufacturers to make sure that their marketing practices in the U.S. were beyond reproach. Says Atsuyoshi Ouchi, senior executive vice president of Nippon Electric: "We were told that we had to be particularly careful about the possibility of being slapped with charges of dumping...
Ironically, the outcome of the semiconductor contest could be affected by two giant American companies that have never sold a chip: IBM and the Western Electric unit of AT&T. They make millions of chips, but use them internally to build such finished products as computers and telephone switching equipment. IBM produces more 64K RAM chips than all the world's semiconductor firms combined. The company's manufacturing process for the 64K achieves a phenomenal 60% yield of perfect chips, compared with a maximum of 50% claimed by the Japanese...