Hi Again! Mark Ross is right, Electronic Buyers News ( http://www.ebnews.com/ ) has a few articles...here's a paste of a few paragraphs from one of them... -Steve Gregory- Outlook 2000: Passives shortage persists By Bettyann Liotta Electronic Buyers' News (01/03/00, 11:52:57 AM EDT) The wave of strong demand that began to sweep through capacitor and SAW-filter supply last year is expected to wash away stock in other portions of the passive-component industry in 2000, analysts say. Asia's recovery and a growing appetite for parts from several industries, particularly communications, will keep inventory low at manufacturers of such passive components as resistors, fuses, cable, and certain connectors over the next several quarters. “Every segment of the electronics market is hot now,” said Richard Schuster, president of NIC Components Inc., Melville, N.Y., a subsidiary of Nu Horizons Electronics Corp. Indeed, NIC Components is actually turning away large orders for small-case-size surface-mount tantalum and multilayer ceramic capacitors, according to Schuster. “Worldwide, there is an approximate 250 million piece-per-month production shortfall for tantalum chips, and a shortfall of roughly three billion pieces per month for ceramics,” he noted. Since several customers have turned to high-capacitance ceramics as well as surface-mount aluminum capacitors in place of tantalum products, lead times for these products are lengthening, according to Schuster. “High-capacitance 10 mF and 22 mF ceramics in the Y5V dielectric are at 30 weeks,” he said. Chip resistors are also becoming scarce, he added. Promising prospects The latest market upswing will push worldwide sales of capacitors to $12.2 billion in 2000, up 8.9% from $11.2 billion in 1999, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan Inc., Mountain View, Calif. “It's going to be a great year for passives makers, especially capacitor and resistor makers,” said Dennis Zogbi, president of Paumanok Publications Inc., Cary, N.C. “This is real. I don't see any indication of double ordering.” Several companies, however, have acknowledged that orders are being inflated by anticipated Y2K problems. Littelfuse Inc., for example, said that it has started to put customers on allocation for certain electronic fuses. ############################################################## TechNet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8c ############################################################## To subscribe/unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the body: To subscribe: SUBSCRIBE TECHNET <your full name> To unsubscribe: SIGNOFF TECHNET ############################################################## Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional information. If you need assistance - contact Gayatri Sardeshpande at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5365 ##############################################################