Business Notes RESEARCH

Japanese companies have dominated the market for computer memory chips since the mid-1980s, but they may soon be facing stiffer competition from the U.S. and Europe. Last week IBM and West Germany's Siemens said they will join forces to develop a chip with a capacity of 64 million bits of information, or four times as much as today's experimental 16-megabit chips.

The Siemens-IBM venture is a welcome boost for the U.S. high-tech industry, which has suffered from a downturn in corporate spending on research and development. According to a study by the National Science Foundation, the growth in U.S. research spending in 1989 failed to keep pace with inflation for the first time since 1975. U.S. outlays rose 3.4% last year, to $68.8 billion, but inflation hit 4.6%. Among reasons for the downturn is the relatively high level of U.S. interest rates, which increases the cost of financing research, and corporate America's emphasis on short-term results.