Mobile Phone Craze Boosts Silicon Sales

Written by Adam Gosling

Wednesday, 05 July 2006

Consumer products are driving the semiconductor market with memory and signal processing and camera parts used in mobile phones and digital cameras growing well as PC microprocessor sales ease 2 percent. Worldwide, the semiconductor market in May alone was worth US$19.7 billion. That's 9.4 percent more than May last year (US$18.1 billion) and up a little from the month before, but that's not thanks to sales of notebooks and desktop computers, it's mobile phones, digital cameras and media players driving the market. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) releases quarterly results which aggregate sales revenues from 66 semiconductor companies into a moving average to track how well the silicon industry is holding up. The May data suggests favourable worldwide economic conditions will allow the market to grow another 9.8 percent this year. The SIA actually raised its prediction from 7.9 percent on the strength of these most recent results. "As consumer products drive an increasing proportion of microchip sales, the growth of the semiconductor industry more closely reflects overall economic growth. Sales of cell phones and other consumer electronics products once again were the principal contributors to growth in semiconductor sales.," said SIA President George Scalise. "We expect to see global semiconductor sales running 9 to 10 percent ahead of last year's pace for the next several months. End market demand, inventory levels, and capacity utilization all indicate generally favourable conditions for the industry. The biggest gains were made in sales of analogue chips, which grew by 21.5 percent over the year before. Digital signal processor (DSP) sales grew by 13.7 percent also, indicating that sales of mobile phones are the hottest microelectonics market. "Strong growth in sales of NOR flash memory products and optoelectronic devices are indicators of continued growth in sales of digital cameras and cell phones," Scalise said. The PC business was not without its hot spots. DRAM sales were up 13.7 percent on the year before, but CPU sales declined 2 per cent between May 2005 and May 2006. It's not that PC sales are such a disaster though, The Association says this indicates inventory shifts rather than a deline in total market sales. In the PC market, laptops were singled out for a special mention with the SIA noting that consumers had never had it so good. The average selling price for a notebook computer is now below US$1,000 for the first time ever, Scalise said. To view the data table click here which will take you to the www.sia-online.org downloads area. Related news items Tiny Rugged UMPC WIth Vista -10/10/2007 The Poor Man's Palm -02/10/2007 Armani, Prada, Labels Get Mobile -26/09/2007 Next-Gen 3G RAZR DownUnder -24/09/2007 Nokia E51: Smarter Than It Looks -19/09/2007 Newer news items AMD's $5.6 Million Deal To Take ATI -22/07/2006 Will 2006 Be a Billion Handset Year? -21/07/2006 Cheap Pentium M Deals Good For Buyers -18/07/2006 Bun Fight Over AdWords Campaigns -17/07/2006 Symbol Toughens Data For Forklifts -10/07/2006 Older news items Intel Sells Off XScale -27/06/2006 iPod Worker Exploiter Second Largest IT Company In World -26/06/2006 Qualcomm Denies Causing Nokia/Sanyo Decision -25/06/2006 Qualcomm Kills Nokia, Sanyo CDMA Deal -22/06/2006 Acer Banks On Major NAB Contract -21/06/2006 Tag This Now: