What's this
08/01/2003
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As usual, my carry-on bag was bloated with analyst reports, predictions and prophecies gathered while racing to appointments with equipment manufacturers and contamination control thought leaders at SEMICON West 2003. These reports are now neatly stacked on my desk—right next to the stack of reports I feverishly gathered last year.
We can digest and rehash numbers in coming issues the same way we did over the past three years following SEMICON, the chip market's most intense party. During this turbulent period, however, reporters found that our e-mail inboxes were full of follow-up "adjustments"—subtle tweaks to earlier calculations that took the semi equipment market from partly cloudy to downright stormy.
In the July issue of CleanRooms, we felt obliged to crunch pre-show forecasts, but it's not until the doors open on a show of SEMICON's magnitude that one can start to actually feel the vibe.
And this was a difficult vibe to define. While just about everyone agrees that worldwide capital spending will finally return to positive growth rates, I found a battle-weary bunch anxious for liberty call.
"If you took the time to visit each of the exhibiting companies [1,524], you'd probably get that many versions of how they spent the last two years in business and how that experience has shaped their ideals on future growth," a product manager for a gas delivery supplier told me. "Everyone in this room is grinding forward cautiously."
I heard tales of product and attitude reengineering. I found equipment companies retrofitting current competencies for life sciences markets and was privy to vigorous plans for upgrading existing used equipment to be used in the reported seven fabs being built in China.
An engineer at an automation company told me that it's "simply part of our core strategy now, developing and adapting to new markets."
About halfway though my second hectic day, I got hit with another handshake; but what followed was the most intriguing response of the week: "This is it, this is the new normal."
According to Fast Company magazine, the phrase "New Normal" was recently coined by veteran technology investor Roger McNamee. It simply means the state we live in now. Doing more with less, taking your time, learning from mistakes, getting rich slowly, digging in and rebuilding integrity and discipline—the un-'90s.
So rest assured, what you've been feeling the last two years has been diagnosed; however, the cure may be difficult to administer.
Michael A. Levans
Chief Editor