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Chip revenues still decline

by on21 December 2009

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Latest Gartner figures


Worldwide chip revenues are set to post a 11.4 per cent decline in 2009, according to Gartner. The beancounters pointed out that 2009 will be the first time that the semiconductor industry experienced declines two years in a row.

Memory revenues declined in 2009, but by significantly less than the entire semiconductor industry, Gartner said. However the good news is that after shuffling its tarot cards, Big G is predicting a recovery in the memory segment. Big G said that memory vendors had slashed capital spending in the previous years, and supply constraints effectively elevated pricing. NAND flash moved into an undersupply, DRAM followed late in the second quarter of 2009 and prices went orbital.

The bankruptcy of Qimonda and near collapse of some of the weaker Taiwan-based players meant that most of the major DRAM vendors were able to pick up market share at the expense of these companies and even report revenue growth, Gartner said.

Samsung and Hynix Semiconductor are expected to do really well thanks to the long-awaited firming of memory prices, according to Gartner. According to the Big G report, neither the recession nor its recovery was felt equally by all semiconductor vendors. The PC segment was the first to spring back, followed later in the year by other segments reflecting consumer sentiment, like cell phones and automobiles.

Enterprise spending was most deeply impacted by the recession and remains slow to recover.

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