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PURCHASING HOTLINE - TRANSACTION PRICES
ECONOMY - Commerce revised upward its fourth quarter real GDP growth estimate by a whopping 1.1 points
- Latest nabe outlook shows a distinct shift in thinking among professional prognosticators
- Consumer confidence stumbled in February, falling to 141.8 (1985=100) from 144.7 in January
- Purchasing's Leadtime Index jumped 15 points between February and March
- U.S. trade deficit, the only blemish on an otherwise healthy economy, surged to an all-time high of $271.3 billion in 1999
- Construction spending rose a surprising 2.7% in January to a record annual rate of $751.8 billion
MARKETS - Enterprise networking equipment makers have a huge appetite for connectors
- Dell Computer is the top workstation supplier in the world for 1999
- AMD and Intel are now shipping 1-gigahertz microprocessors
- Consolidation in office supplies distribution continues
- The global marketplace for information appliances is expected to exceed 89 million units worth $17.8 billion in 2004
- Outsourcing is not just for OEMs anymore
- Texas Instruments remains king of the hill in digital signal processor
- Palm Inc. lays claim to a dominant 75% of the market for handheld products that connect people to the Web
- Demand for semiconductors is now growing at double digits rates
- Only 13% among 2.3 million U.S. small businesses currently can facilitate commerce using the Internet
- JetBlue Airways, a new discount carrier, is flying between New York, Buffalo and Fort Lauderdale
- The number of North American cable modem subscribers surged to 1.8 million in 1999
- Business-to-business e-commerce is hot, with analysts predicting it to be a $400 billion business this year
- IBM has taken steps to expand into the growing business-to-business e-commerce sector
- Microsoft this summer will start shipping pocket versions of Excel, Outlook InBox, and Word for the Pocket PC
- Companies soon will be outsourcing strategic and technical elements of their e-mail marketing initiatives
- Worldwide semiconductor sales reached $14.77 billion in January, a 32.9% increase from $11.11 billion in January 1999
- World sales of spin-processing equipment for wafer fabrication could rise by as much as 155% this year
- Flash memory card makers are expecting to be on allocation of devices for most of this year because of severe chip shortages
PRICES - Look for Intel to cut microprocessor prices at least two more times this year
- Federal Express is adding another percentage point to its 3% fuel surcharge on most domestic and international shipments beginning April 1
- The prices paid index for manufacturing supplies shot up to a new five-year high in February
- Producers are proposing a $50/ton price hike on kraft packaging paper for second quarter
- Memory chip tags are declining
- The severe glut of silicon substrates for chip making is easing in some market segments, and prices for high-purity 200-mm wafers are rising
- Stable prices are expected for the LCD panels used in notebook computers
- Brand-name manufacturers have lowered computer keyboard prices because of sagging sales and rising imports of low-priced generic keyboards
- Average sales price for wafers based on five-layer, 0.18-micron process technology will jump to $3,000 each by the third quarter from $2,800 now
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