Manufacturing
Market vision
Market vision
GEORGE KOTELLY
The North American semiconductor-equipment industry posted a book-to-bill ratio of 1.10 for January 1999, as reported by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (Mountain View, CA). This ratio means that $110 in semiconductor orders were received for every $100 of products shipped. Three-month average shipments in January 1999 were $868 million. This figure is 3% lower than the December 1998 level and 41% below the January 1998 level.