Buoyancy in the chip market is not all it seems, it seems. Reports today from both the USA and the Far East suggested that the memory market was on the rise. But our daily DRAM update showed that prices on 64Mbit SIMMs has fallen steeply since last Friday. A report from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA, also reported here, predicted that memories had bottomed out for this year and would rise steeply in the future. And the Korea Herald reported both IDC and Dataquest predicting boom rather than doom. But the local English language newspaper questioned whether it was a boom or just a temporary rebound fuelled by seasonal (i.e. Christmas) factors. ®