Far from slipping back a point as most analysts had forecast, the US Semiconductor Industry Association’s book-to-bill ratio, which seems to take much longer to add up now that it is seasonally adjusted, and had been postponed twice before it appeared very late on Thursday, soared to an all time high of 1.22 in July, driven primarily by a big increase in orders. Some observers believe that many of the orders are phantom ones and that companies are double-ordering just in case demand for new machines on which to run Windows95 exceed their internal forecasts. Chip orders rose 3% on the June figure to $4,460m, up 52.7% on July 1994. Shipments to the US market also reached a new high, albeit only 0.4% up on the June figure, at $3,670m.
