Factors Affecting Product Cost
Staff -- Purchasing, 11/17/2005
- Average selling prices for total integrated circuits (ICs) are expected to resume growth in the first quarter of 2006, following this year's 15% decline from the cyclical high in January 2005 and stagnating since August at $1.58. So predicts Advanced Forecasting, which sees continued increased sales of IC units and strengthened fab capacity utilization rates—thus driving transaction prices upward.
- Global sales of semiconductors expanded 5.4% in the three months ended in September, but the increase was in units shipped and not prices. More chips were shipped to makers of cellular telephones, computers and electronic gadgets, report J.P. Morgan Securities analysts in London. They say there was only a modest 2% increase in prices worldwide.
- Lexmark International has reduced prices by $100 on some of its T640 series of monochrome laser printers. The printers involved typically cost between $1,000 and $1,400 each. The company has cheaper and more expensive models not impacted by this discounting action.
- Expect prices for 17-in. liquid crystal display (LCD) monitors to fall over the next 12 months. The average price of a 17-in. LCD panel was $170 in October. The price will fall to $159 in January and drop throughout 2006, reaching $135 in the fourth quarter, according to researcher iSuppli. Prices are falling because suppliers have added capacity.
- Container freight rates in the Pacific may fall in 2006 for the first time in five years, said three of Asia's largest shipping lines at a recent shipping conference. Capacity looks to outpace demand next year, said Park Jung Won, chief executive at Hanjin Shipping Co., South Korea's largest line. Rates may fall 5% next year, according to Yasuhide Sakinaga, chairman of Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha, Japan's third-largest shipping company. Orient Overseas (International), which operates Asia's seventh-largest container shipping line, expects container fleet capacity to increase about 30% next year and Tung Chee Chen, chief executive of the company, says container rates have peaked.
- The pricing peak has ended and DDR2 chips are in an oversupply because the market transition is slower than expected, said Frank Wang, an analyst at Morgan Stanley in Taipei in a recent report. "The spot pricing will continue to trend down."
Talkback
Related Content
Related Content
Sponsored Links
View All Blogs
Now Playing:
