A report from the Semiconductor Industry Association shows that chip sales increased more than 5 percent in July. This trend is driven by new purchases of devices such as cell phones and PCs, including notebooks and netbooks. The SIA report comes a few days after Intel raised its financial outlook.
Global semiconductor sales increased 5.3 percent in July, thanks to
consumers buying more handheld devices, such as smartphones and cell phones, as
well as PCs, according to an Aug. 31 report from the
Semiconductor Industry Association.
In July, worldwide chip sales hit $18.2 billion in revenue compared with
$17.2 billion in June. However, the first six months of 2009 saw chip sales
decline 25 percent from those of the previous year, and July chip sales were
18.2 percent lower than those of July 2008, according to SIA.
Still, the news is good for an industry that has struggled as both consumers
and businesses cut back on the amount of hardware such as PCs and cell phones that
they purchase. The SIA report also followed an encouraging report from
Intel,
the world's biggest producer of x86 processors for PCs and server systems.
On Aug. 28,
Intel
announced that it would increase its third-quarter financial forecast to
reflect an unexpected demand for its processors and chip sets. While Intel
executives previously expected revenue between $8.1 billion and $8.9 billion
for the third quarter, they are now expecting the quarter's revenues to fall
between $8.8 billion and $9.2 billion.
The increase in chip sales is being driven by the consumer market. The SIA
report found that
consumers
have started buying more PCs, especially netbooks or low-cost mininotebooks,
as well as handheld devices such as smartphones and cell phones.
"Sales of consumer products such as netbook PCs and cell phones are
supporting the modest recovery in demand that is now under way," SIA
President George Scalise wrote in an Aug. 31 statement.
However, the SIA report found that large enterprises are not buying IT
hardware, such as corporate PCs and server systems. The SIA report concluded
that many IT administrators are cautious about what hardware they are buying
and businesses have increased their hardware replacement cycles in order to
save money.
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