Making Sense of the Used Equipment Marketplace

摘要

Can a smalt new consortium change the way used equipment is bought and sold? One byproduct of the semiconductor industry's rapid growth and practice of moving to a new technology node every two to three years is a growing stockpile of used equipment. How that equipment is bought and sold has always involved a complex web of buyers, sellers, brokers, leasers, OEMs, auction houses and remanufacturers/ refurbishers. Now, a host of new Internet-based enterprises have sprung up, aimed at "bringing buyers and sellers together" in the used equipment market. Some say these "B2Bs" are using the Internet as a tool to make the buying process more efficient; others say the "good" equipment is sold long before it would ever appear on a Web site, and the only efficient thing about buying on the Web is how quickly you can get into trouble.