While
many businesses are still dealing with the aftermath of the global recession,
the semiconductor industry is poised for a rebound as demand for PCs and cell
phones drives chip sales.
Worldwide
chip sales increased 47.2 percent from January 2009 to January 2010, according
to the Semiconductor Industry’s Association’s March 1 report. In January 2010,
chip sales totaled $22.5 billion compared to $15.3 billion in January 2009.
The
SIA
report also found that chip sales held steady between December and January.
In
a typical year, chip sales fall between December and January when the holiday
shopping season ends and consumers cut back on their spending. In 2010,
however, SIA found that chip sales increased about 0.3 percent between December
2009 – $22.4 billion – and January 2010 -- $22.5 billion.
Consumer
demand for laptops, desktops, cell phones and smartphones is helping to drive
the global semiconductor market, according to SIA. In addition, chips sales
were helped by better-than-expected automobile sales.
“We
are currently seeing strength across a range of demand drivers for
semiconductors, including personal computers, cell phones, automobiles and
industrial applications,” SIA President George Scalise wrote in a statement.
If
consumers and businesses keep buying PCs and handheld devices, and the global
economy rebounds later in 2010, SIA could revise its November forecast, which
called for chip sales to reach $242.1 billion this year.
With
this in mind, many of the larger chip makers are gearing up to offer a number
of new, enterprise-class processors. In February, IBM
released its Power7 processor for high-end systems, while Intel
released the latest version of its Itanium chip.
On
Feb. 22, Advanced
Micro Devices said it planned to start shipping its 12-core “Magny-Cours”
Opteron processors to certain customers before beginning a full-scale
rollout by the end of the quarter.
In
addition to the SIA report, iSuppli released its own chip forecast on March 1.
The
iSuppli report concluded that demand for memory chips, including DRAM (dynamic
RAM) and NAND
Flash, which is used primarily with MP3 players and solid state drives (SSDs),
will see a nearly 100 percent revenue increase during the first quarter of
2010.
The
demand for DRAM and NAND memory is being driven by two factors: Chip
manufacturers keeping inventories in check, and the increasing demand
for smartphones that have greater and greater capabilities.
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