BUYLINES
Computers, Business Systems and Office Products
COVER STORY
Electronics Purchasing
HOTLINE - Are you up to the competitive challenges of the electronics marketplace?
- Electronics buyers: Don't worry about planned production cutbacks of 64-megabit drams
- Expect flash memory prices to continue their fall until at least the year 2000
- Count on soaring rate increases on Asian imports to stop abruptly
- Keep an eye on economic problems in Latin America
- Visit Purchasing
- Look out for wood pallets from China!
- Intermodal shippers should watch for new study
- Expect more portable computers to be equipped with 15-inch LCD screens
- Look for the worldwide Internet server market to nearly double
- Rising steel imports will slow a bit through year-end
- Is your MRO buying strategic--or do you just wing it?
- Worried about Web site security?
- Expect pay raises to average near 4% this year
- Watch for continued growth of wireless computer networks
- Don't be surprised if workstation prices keep falling
- Want to slash invoicing costs? Use procurement cards
- Of the economists polled in September by Blue Chip Economic Indicators
- Uncle's final revision places the second-quarter real GDP growth rate at 1.8%
Economy - Think twice about playing the import price card with suppliers
- Civilian unemployment edged up to 4.6% in September
- "Credit crunch" may be premature
- Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach calculates that the August stock market plunge could reduce consumer spending
Markets - The global glut of memory chips will be worked off by second-half 1999
- Jorma Ollila, CEO of cellular-phone giant Nokia, has raised his forecast
- Appliance manufacturers ex-pect continued demand growth
- U.S. machine tool sales totaled $4.6 billion
- Demand for copper technical tube has weakened
- Expect new high-density, high-performance 1-gigabit sdram memory chips to be commercially available
- The U.S. paper industry must restructure, consolidate, and close inefficient mills
- Use of tailored blanks in the North American automotive industry is now expected to exceed 700,000 tons/year
- Although North American news-print demand will rise 2% this year, a projected 12% drop in exports
- Oliver Stuart, senior aviation analyst at Avmark International Ltd. in London, has become the resident bear
- Delta Air Lines is joining rivals Continental and Trans World in merging first- and business classes
- Iridium, the $5 billion satellite-based mobile phone system, is delaying until November its launch
- North American farm and construction equipment sales are booming
- Aluminum-intensive truck trailer production will break records this year
- Global aluminum smelting capacity is expected to rise 22.32 million metric tons by 2001
- Some time in 1999, AT&T will launch AT&T INC (Integrated Network Connect), a high-speed communications service
Prices - Heating oil might return to last year's $22/barrel
- Stainless steel mills are still waiting for the market to accept a proposed 5% increase
- Industrial propane prices will rise only a half penny per gallon in each of the next two years
- Polyethylene's downward price spiral could lose momentum
- Nickel market analysts have reduced the consensus domestic spot forecast
- Gold futures are averaging less than $300 for the year
- Led by Millennium Inorganic Chemicals and Kerr-McGee, producers of titanium dioxide pigments
- Hot-dipped galvanized sheet transactions are now in the $420-$440/ton range
- Spot price average for polycarbonate rose last quarter to $1.63/lb
- Cobalt prices continue to slip because of cheap foreign materials
- Weakening demand and rising imports have cut August-September market prices for stainless steel coiled plate
- A 30% increase in low-priced stainless bar imports has cut domestic prices
- Jerry Ellis, CEO of BHP, the world's second-largest copper producer
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