SIA salutes resumption of chip sales growth

LONDON — Commenting on the three-month average of global chip sales for November, George Scalise, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), said that year-on-year sales growth had resumed and most markets were showing signs of strength.

The three-month average of worldwide sales of semiconductors rose to $22.645 billion in November, a 3.7 percent increase from October when sales were $21.829 billion, an upward revision., Sales were 8.5 percent higher than November 2008 when sales were $20.87 billion. Sales for the first 11 months of 2009 were $202.1 billion, a decline of 13.2 percent from the like period of 2008 when sales were $232.7 billion.

"For the first time in 2009, worldwide semiconductor sales in November were in positive territory compared to one year ago," said Scalise, in a statement. "2009 ended with sales of many IT and consumer products faring better than earlier projections. Sales of personal computers continue to strengthen in line with recent projections and appear to signal the beginning of recovery of demand from the business sector. The release of the Windows 7 operating system in October has been a positive factor. Unit sales of handsets should come in roughly even with 2008 levels. In the consumer space, there have been a few bright spots including LCD TVs, which saw an increase of 25 to 30 percent in units in 2009."

Scalise added: "With a sequential increase of 3.7 percent, November was the ninth-consecutive month of increased chip sales. Sales increased sequentially in all geographic regions."

The SIA reports numbers from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) as a three-month average of the actual sales numbers. The SIA argues that this smoothes out the data which would otherwise display the effects of in-quarter reporting that tend to treat March, June, September and December as five-week months.