Date: 27/08/2009

No quarterly surprise for semiconductor market

Gartner has predicted semiconductor revenues in year 2009 will drop by 17% compared to year 2008. Let's look at every trend in past 3 quarters to next 2 quarters.

Well, the first downfall started in Q4 of 2008, where revenues tumbled down by 30% and the fall continued in the 1st quarter of 2009 but little less. In 2nd quarter of 2009 almost all the leading vendors have increased their quarterly sales at an average quarterly growth of above >15%.

What's in store for 3rd quarter of year 2009? If we read into outlook of most of the financial releases, it's positive, can easily anticipate a growth rate of 10%. So it's nearly back to the revenues of 3rd quarter 2008.

The 4th quarter of 2009 is the one, which can really tell 2009 going to be a better( or worst) year than 2008. At the least we can anticipate 4th quarter 2009 won't be as bad as 4th quarter of 2008. It's surely going to be improvement both on q-o-q basis as well as a year ago figures.

If we look at the semiconductor revenue growth figures curve of 2009, it looks similar to the semiconductor revenue growth figures curve of 2008, except that it's reversed.

Generally even in the past, semiconductor industry's either growth or fall trend had continued for a minimum of 4 to 5 quarters, Since now the growth has picked up in 2Q08, it will continue for another few quarters without any negative surprise.

By looking into all these facts, semiconductor industry might not register the fall figures of 17% as predicted by Gartner.