Chip Sales Fall Slightly In January

Semiconductor sales fell slightly in January, an industry trade group reported, although the chip industry reported a sharp jump in year-over-year growth.

Semiconductor sales fell slightly in January, an industry trade group reported, although the chip industry reported a sharp jump in year-over-year growth.

The Semiconductor Industry Association, the chip industrys trade group, said worldwide chip sales fell by 3.0 percent from December to January. The $15.5 billion the industry racked up in January, however, represented a 26.6 percent jump from January 2003. the month-to-month decrease was consistent with the lower sales that usually follow the holiday buying season, the SIA said.

"For more than a decade now, with the exception of the boom year 2000, sales have been slightly lower in January than December because of the seasonality of the semiconductor industry," stated SIA President George Scalise, in a statement. "We continue to expect sales for all of 2004 to meet the current forecast of 19.4% with broad-based strength in all major end-markets, especially computation, communications, global consumer and automotive."

The SIA said that month-to-month sales decreased in all of the worldwide regions tracked by the agency. When comparing sales figures from January 2002, however, the agency found that the Chinese/Asia-Pacific market grew 34 percent, followed by Europe at 19.5. Sales in the Americas grew by 14.8 percent.

Last week, analyst firm Gartner Inc. predicted that 2004 chip sales would increase about 22.6 percent, compared to 2003.

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