TOKYO: December bookings for Japanese tools used to make microchips rose from the previous month, ascomputer memory chip price falls slow and nudge sentiment up, anindustry group said on Tuesday.

The book-to-bill ratio, a measure of future demand forchip-making equipment, stood at 0.99, meaning that for every 100yen of sales, new orders worth 99 yen came in, the SemiconductorEquipment Association of Japan said.

Although orders fell short of sales for the sixth straightmonth, the December figure was a rise from November's 0.87, asmanufacturers gingerly place more orders for equipment toprocess wafers, print circuitry and slice them into semiconductors.

The book-to-bill ratio is seen as an indicator of demand forchip-making equipment, which can take from one to 12 months tobuild and deliver.

The data comes as makers of dynamic random access memorysuch as Taiwan's Nanya Technology Corp (2408.TW: Quote, Profile, Research) said theyexpect tight supplies and improved prices of chips in 2008,while smaller maker ProMOS Technologies Inc (5387.TWO: Quote, Profile, Research) plans tosuspend production in the face of brutal losses.

Chip makers such as IBM (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), South Korea's SamsungElectronics Co Ltd (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research), Japan's Elpida Memory Inc(6665.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Toshiba Corp (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research) have said they aim to spendmore on equipment to squeeze smaller circuits onto more powerfulchips while cutting per-chip production costs.

Worldwide orders for Japanese chip-making equipment totalled132.22 billion yen ($1.24 billion) in December, and sales cameto 134.21 billion yen, according to the preliminary data.

Japan is home to semiconductor gear makers such as Tokyo Electron Ltd (8035.T: Quote, Profile, Research), Advantest Corp (6857.T: Quote, Profile, Research), Disco Corp(6146.T: Quote, Profile, Research), Yokogawa Electric Corp (6841.T: Quote, Profile, Research) and Nikon Corp(7731.T: Quote, Profile, Research).

Following are details of Japanese chip equipment orders,sales and the book-to-bill ratio (orders and sales figures are three-month moving averages, in billion yen): 

	Orders	Sales	Book-to-bill
December	132.215	134.206	0.99
November	129.901	149.315	0.87
October	127.056	161.892	0.78
September	129.323	176.126	0.73
August	139.673	172.772	0.81
July	147.058	166.458	0.88
(Reporting by Mayumi Negishi)