In a surprise comparable with the fall in UK unemployment for February, foreign semiconductor manufacturers took an astonishing 20.1% of the Japanese market in the fourth quarter of 1992 according to both Japan and the US – but the Japanese now worry that the system of targeting a specific foreign share of the market will be demanded for other product categories. There is also a fear – and expectation – that if the Japanese market begins to recover, the foreign share of the chip market will fall back again to around 16% later this year. The headline improvement is thought to have come about because demand for US-made microprocessors held up while demand for commodity chips for consumer products slumped.
