Date: 05/05/2010

The market growth to continue for semiconductor industry in remaining quarters of 2010

After a 9% fall in revenue in 2009, the semiconductor industry is geared up for a growth of 20% in 2010. Industry has seen both fall and rise in 2009 itself, by end of 2009 the recession was out. Now it is time for planning growth.

The growth in shipment of portable computers, smartphones, HD TVs, Automotives, Solar and energy, and medical electronics demanding more chips and devices from semiconductor vendors. It can be SoC chip or a passive component, the small, smart, fast and energy saving device are in full demand. Hardly you can find market domains, which are not growing; you can stay away from dirty technologies (environment damagers).

But the growth is more seen in shipment rather than by revenue in most of the application domains. This is a bit concern for chip vendors with high profit margin. In this innovation and volume driven industry falling price of chips is the tough thing to manage. This trend is seen not only in devices but also in products. See the mobile phone market in India, now Nokia is having tough competition from local phone makers whose devices are as reliable and feature rich as phones from leading brands and also are less expensive. This is good news for semiconductor vendors so that they have more customers.

There are plenty of opportunities and also the revenue sucking pits. However the 2010 is going to be a happy year for semiconductor industry and 2011 is going to be quite hopeful.

Here is a couple of latest market data and forecasts for you:

SIA has reported that worldwide semiconductor sales in March 2010 were $23.1 billion, an increase of 4.6 percent from February when sales were $22.0 billion. Sales increased by 58.3 percent from March 2009 when sales were $14.6 billion. The first quarter of 2009 marked the low point in semiconductor sales during the global economic recession. Sales for the first quarter of 2010 were $69.2 billion compared to $43.7 billion for the first quarter of 2009. All monthly sales numbers represent a three-month moving average.