Liste Newsletter

Index Performances
EPITEX, EPITA’S INDEX, Nov. 26, 2004: 80.76 (EPITEX set at 100 on Aug. 31, 2001)

News

MARKET FOCUS

U.S. stocks were flat on Friday, in a light, shortened session after the Thanksgiving holiday, with many participants away from the market for the most traveled extended weekend of the year.

Chipmaker giant Intel lost more than 2 percent ahead of its mid-quarter update due next Thursday. Also, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said third-quarter consumer electronic sales are likely to be flat vs. year-ago figures.

The U.S. dollar fell to an all-time low against the euro at $1.3328, down from its prior low set on Wednesday at $1.3178. Market players are concerned that central banks in many countries will start divesting the U.S. dollar because its weakness undermines its role as a reserve currency.

OUTLOOK

Holiday sales could set the tone for the market, with retailers hoping for about $7.5 billion in consumer spending for the Friday after Thanksgiving.

The market will also brace for the ISM national manufacturing data on Wednesday and the employment report for November on Friday, when forecasters anticipate the addition of about 200,000 jobs following a gain of 337,000 in October, while the jobless rate should slip to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent.

THE NUMBERS

The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 2 points to 10,522. The Nasdaq composite index ended flat at 2,101 while the Nasdaq-100 index of large capitalization tech and biotech stocks ended off 0.2 percent at 1,578.

Profile

Light Reading, an independent market research firm specialized in telecom technology, said China has become the world’s top spot for Ethernet services, due to massive growth in residential broadband demand.

Light Reading conducted in October an exclusive survey of major carriers across China, providing insight into their current Ethernet service deployment strategies. With 30 million broadband households as of June 2004, China is now the world’s biggest broadband market by subscriber count, which nearly doubled in the first half of 2004.

China’s service providers are aggressively using Ethernet to target the residential market - a strategy that has yet to catch on in Western markets.

Although China’s carriers are offering the kinds of enterprise Ethernet services that are becoming popular elsewhere, they are making a strong commitment to delivering Ethernet to the residential market, including services that are typically associated with major cities in the most advanced Western economies.

FTTX is emerging as the primary broadband access technology in China’s urban markets.

The emphasis on fiber-based access is not surprising, given that China’s cities are dominated by large blocks of newer apartment buildings. Most Chinese cities also are well supplied with fiber in the core that can be extended out to these residential blocks.

Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Juniper Networks and IBM were among the technology suppliers named most often as partners by Chinese service providers. The report includes detailed data about China’s Ethernet service landscape that can be searched by carrier, region, or urban market. The report includes detailed maps showing current Ethernet service deployments by China's telecom carriers, as well as cross-carrier maps that plot out the levels of competition by region and city.