November chip sales up 27.5% on a year ago

LONDON — November's global market for semiconductors was $21.63 billion, according to "actual" data from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization. This was slightly down on the upwardly revised figure for October of $22.19 billion, but exceeded the November 2008 actual sales figure of $16.96 billion by 27.5 percent.

October's revised actual sales were 14.5 percent ahead of those of October 2008. The massive swing illustrates how sales have largely recovered from the deep decline they were headed into one year ago.

November's sales are almost identical with those of November 2007 but still slightly behind the $22.05 billon sales WSTS records for November 2006.

The reason for the discrepancy between the numbers quoted by the SIA and the "actual" figures from WSTS, is that the SIA takes the WSTS numbers and creates a three-month average from a given month and the two preceding months. It argues that this smoothes out the data which would otherwise display the effect of in-quarter reporting that tend to treat March, June, September and December as five-week months.

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