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Semi sales fell 2.4% in October, SIA reports

Slowdown seen in September continues; numbers fall even when memory is excluded.

By Matthew Miller, Editor in Chief, EDN.com -- EDN, 12/1/2008

Global semiconductor revenue fell 2.4% in October, topping out at $22.5 billion, compared with $23 billion in October 2007, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA, www.sia-online.org) in a report released today. Sales also dropped by 2.1% in comparison with September 2008.

Year-to-date sales through October stand at $216 billion, a 2.6% increase over the first 10 months of 2007's $210 billion, according to the association. Excluding the brutal memory segments doesn't improve the picture very much, either; the figure for October 2008 versus October 2007 is a tepid 3.8% increase, and October 2008 sales of non-memory products fell 1.4% compared with September 2008.

How hard are memory suppliers getting hit? DRAM sales in October dropped 14% compared with the same month a year ago, the SIA said. But flash-memory makers would likely take that bitter pill if they could choose to do so; NAND flash revenue plunged nearly 41% over the same time period. Unit-shipment figures for the same time frame put the extent of the pricing pressure into sharp relief: Shipments of 1-Gbit equivalent units of DRAM increased 73% and 2-Gbit equivalent NAND units grew 123%.

"The slowdown in worldwide semiconductor sales that became evident in September continued in October," SIA President George Scalise said in a statement. "The worldwide financial turmoil is expected to continue to impact demand for semiconductors as we enter 2009." Unit shipments of both PCs and cell phones—which together account for about 60% of total semiconductor demand—are expected to drop in 2009, the former by 5% and the latter by 9%, he added.