Date: 29/10/2009

15 -20% sequential growth of world's semiconductor revenues in 3rd Quarter of 2009

Based on our early analysis of the revenue figures announced by some of the semiconductor vendors, we estimate the overall semiconductor revenue has grown in the range of 15-20% sequentially from 2nd quarter 2009 to 3rd quarter 2009. However on year over year (y-o-y) comparison the revenues are expected to be down around 10 -12% in 3rd quarter 2009 compared to 3rd quarter 2008.

The DRAM and notebook processors are the main drivers. Consumer ICs is another hot growing area. Hynix, ARM and Intel's positive results indicate quite a lot about the overall industry growth.
Muti-domain vendors such as Freescale Semiconductor, Fujitsu, TI, and NXP Semiconductor are improving but not yet fully recovered from the ill effects of late 2008 and early 2009.

Discrete semiconductor device vendors Fairchild Semiconductor, Vishay, Intersil are still in bad shape though moved into growth path.

The surprise is, processor IP-vendor ARM and processor-maker Intel are growing y-o-y and sequentially at nearly same figures.

Geographically Semiconductor vendors in Taiwan and Korea are zooming fast in recovery due to surge in DRAM and consumer ICs. US and Europe are the next fast recovering regions followed by Japan. Along with the US and EU, emerging markets like China and India are driving the market demand.

This time, size is not the growth or fall parameter, the industry growth is distributed across all sizes of companies.

Here is the sample revenue table sorted by company size.
Company Revenue in 3Q09 Y-o-Y growth (%) Sequential growth (%) Product domain
Intel 9400 -8.00 17.50 Processor
TI 2880 -15.00 17.00 Multi-domain
ST Microelectronics 2275 -7.33 14.00 Multi-domain
Hynix 1781 26.22 15.28 DRAM
Fujitsu 1524 -23.20 23.00 Multi-domain
NXP Semiconductor 1034 -14.97 19.20 Multi-domain
Freescale Semiconductor 893 -36.67 8.37 Multi-domain
LSI 578 -19.00 11.00 Computer and storage
Vishay 521 -29.51 13.26 Analog and Discrete
Fairchild Semiconductor 331.8 -23.00 19.00 Analog and Discrete
RFMD 254.8 -6.22 0.20 RF
Triquint Semiconductor 173 -7.14 2.00 RF
Intersil 168.3 -23.00 14.00 Analog and Discrete
ARM* 123 -8.48 16.59 Processor
Sunplus 69 46.81 30.19 Consumer
Dialog Semiconductor 59 34.00 31.00 Consumer
Zarlink 53.6 -13.27 0.00 Communications
Anadigics 36.7 -36.80 16.70 RF
Trident Micro 31.1 -10.63 108.72 Consumer
Transwitch 15.2 44.76 4.83 Communications
Ramtron 11.6 -32.16 5.45 FRAM(Memory)
Total of this sample 22213.1 -11.32 16.63
The fabs and chip-manufacturing and design-support companies are also growing. Here is the sample revenue from four companies.

Company Revenue in 3Q09 Y-o-Y growth (%) Sequential growth (%) Product domain
Chartered Semiconductor 415.2 -10.40 19.00 Fab
UMC 853 10.70 21.10 Fab
Chipbond 57.57 43.93 40.41 Chip assembly
Siliconware 513 -3.00 18.40 Chip assembly
Cadence 216 -6.90 2.86 EDA (Chip design software)
* ARM does't sell chips.

The updated list of worldwide semiconductor revenue now onwards will be available on our home page all the time.