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Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

bloomberg.com

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Re: Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

#71

Post by powowowow »

stevenjohns wrote: post #56
mrspeaker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've always been trained to think critically about media (I even had classes on it in high school - one called "critical thinking"!). Seems like now it's just "hate journalists" not "think critically". If something doesn't fit your world view, just ad hominem it. I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this.

It might have something to do with social media making it more obvious that journalists and news agencies are usually partisan and agenda-focused rather than neutral and content-focused. Political journalism (domestic US and international) has completely gone to shit. Tech journalism has slowly fizzled away into just clickbait and financial news has slowly drifted towards interpreting Ouija boards and magic 8-balls.

I think it's nostalgia for an age that never existed, multiplied by a US-based demagogue's campaign against facts.

Journalism has always been deeply flawed and massively biased, yet still useful. The people of the past knew that. You're not smarter than your great grandparents on that front. Tech wasn't some cure-all that opened your eyes but not theirs.

People knew these things.

Re: Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

#72

Post by opencl »

mrspeaker wrote: post #29
ksec wrote: post #28

>Revenue fell 12% to $412 billion in 2019, ....That’s the biggest drop since 2001, when industry sales slumped 32% as the dot-com bubble burst. In 2001 post Dot Com Bubble, that 32% drop was real . The 12% drop in 2019 was only due to NAND and RAM went from Record High and back to "normal". Samsung was the most profitable company in 2018 simply because NAND and DRAM. Almost everyone in Semiconductor industry is makin…

I know we're being trained to hate journalists these days, but that quoted sentence is just stating a fact: the biggest drop since dotcom bubble... and the article reads very reasonable. I don't see anything controversial in there - seems to balance the negatives with things like "the rate of decline abated" and "the decline in industry sales didn’t stop investors betting on a future rebound." - how is that sensation…

It was the third best year since the dot com bubble (also the third best year in the entire history of the industry), only worse than 2017 and 2018.

Re: Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

#73

Post by Roboprog »

stevenjohns wrote: post #56
mrspeaker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've always been trained to think critically about media (I even had classes on it in high school - one called "critical thinking"!). Seems like now it's just "hate journalists" not "think critically". If something doesn't fit your world view, just ad hominem it. I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this.

It might have something to do with social media making it more obvious that journalists and news agencies are usually partisan and agenda-focused rather than neutral and content-focused. Political journalism (domestic US and international) has completely gone to shit. Tech journalism has slowly fizzled away into just clickbait and financial news has slowly drifted towards interpreting Ouija boards and magic 8-balls.

The “payload “ of this article might be the line that attributes the so called crash to a trade war that damaged free trade. Some partisans consider free trade to be sacred, others, evil.

Disclosure: I lean more towards “free trade is evil”, at least if you are labor, rather than capital. Michael Bloomberg might see it differently.

Edit: and I didn’t go into the article looking for a fight - I wanted to see news affecting an industry I work in, and the trade line jumped out. It’s probably even true, but it’s not hard to to imagine ulterior motives for mentioning it.

Re: Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

#74

Post by Polylactic_acid »

dylan604 wrote: post #69
pkaye wrote: post #26

I used to work in the semiconductor equipment industry in the 90s and it was quite cyclical. One year the demand was great and they were hiring like crazy and the next year things were looking dismal and they had to do layoffs. This repeated many times though the overall trend was of growth. I managed to stick around for some time since I was in R&D and with a bit of luck. Things smoothed out considerably over the de…

Does this follow companies not buying new equipment annually, but wait a couple of years inbetween before the next upgrade?

I'm not sure why all companies would be on the same cycle of upgrading. You would assume they would all be offset and it wouldn't make a difference in sales.

Re: Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

#75

Post by Polylactic_acid »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #11
wyxuan wrote: post #4

Could be that Intel chip supply shortages, and decreased average sale prices (due to AMD offerings) could be the reason for this. Not as many people upgrading as inter generational gains start to level off.

Inter generational gains leveled off 5-6 years ago.

I have an intel chip from 6 years ago and I still feel there is hardly any reason to upgrade. It still does everything I need it to do very well. I upgraded my gpu that was about 5 years old and I saw about 3x the performance.

Re: Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

#76

Post by pascalxus »

_jal wrote: post #19
crmrc114 wrote: post #2

This article sounds alarmist. "Revenue fell 12% to $412 billion in 2019, the Semiconductor Industry Association said Monday in a statement. That’s the biggest drop since 2001, when industry sales slumped 32% as the dot-com bubble burst." I don't see how 12% is a skyfall number. Especially when compared to 32%. It was pay-walled so I did not read any further.

We can argue about adjective choice, but a 12% revenue drop in any industry is going to get people's attention. The environment in which that 32% drop happened involved thousands of companies failing within a short time span. I personally ended up leaving the Bay Area after being out of work for over a year. (I came back.) Just to offer some context to hang those numbers on.

I don't see that happening at all currently. The housing market is insane in the bay area, as usual, even out here in the tri-valley area. as far as livermore, houses are selling like hot-cakes, not even on the market for a week.

Re: Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

#77

Post by [deleted] »

powowowow wrote: post #71
stevenjohns wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might have something to do with social media making it more obvious that journalists and news agencies are usually partisan and agenda-focused rather than neutral and content-focused. Political journalism (domestic US and international) has completely gone to shit. Tech journalism has slowly fizzled away into just clickbait and financial news has slowly drifted towards interpreting Ouija boards and magic 8-balls.

I think it's nostalgia for an age that never existed, multiplied by a US-based demagogue's campaign against facts. Journalism has always been deeply flawed and massively biased, yet still useful. The people of the past knew that. You're not smarter than your great grandparents on that front. Tech wasn't some cure-all that opened your eyes but not theirs. People knew these things.

[deleted]

Re: Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

#78

Post by dntbnmpls »

mrspeaker wrote: post #37
thrustmaster wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By "being trained" do you really mean that we are thinking more critically about the information fed to us?

We've always been trained to think critically about media (I even had classes on it in high school - one called "critical thinking"!). Seems like now it's just "hate journalists" not "think critically". If something doesn't fit your world view, just ad hominem it. I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this.

> We've always been trained to think critically about media

If that was true, media wouldn't exist because nobody would consume it.

> Seems like now it's just "hate journalists" not "think critically".

The criticism was about a bloomberg article, not a journalist.

> (I even had classes on it in high school - one called "critical thinking"!).

Do you really believe you learned to think critically in a government funded indoctrination center called high school? It's not what high school were designed for. It's certainly not what high schools are equipped for.

> I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this.

It's always been like this. The media has always lied. People have always criticized it. Nothing has changed.

"Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day."

                                                                              -- Thomas Jefferson ( one of the people who gave us free press )

Re: Chip industry had worst sales year since dot-com bubble burst

#80

Post by c256 »

cbanek wrote: post #48
mrspeaker wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know we're being trained to hate journalists these days, but that quoted sentence is just stating a fact: the biggest drop since dotcom bubble... and the article reads very reasonable. I don't see anything controversial in there - seems to balance the negatives with things like "the rate of decline abated" and "the decline in industry sales didn’t stop investors betting on a future rebound." - how is that sensation…

As someone who watches the financial news, it almost feels more like baseball statistics, where they say something like, "this batter on sunny days in April has an advantage against left-handed pitchers." While it may be true, it feels more like p-hacking than some kind of useful fact. I felt like the financial industry was really doing this early in 2019, after the huge drop in stocks, everyone was like the S&P is u…

> As someone who watches the financial news, it almost feels more like baseball statistics...

If you hear a loud banging noise, don’t buy?

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