Date: 22/10/2010

Semiconductor industry's revenue growth going flat

The global semiconductor market nearly at this same time last year (2009) was riding approx. 20% + growth curve on quarter-over-quarter(q-o-q) basis. Semiconductor industry had rejoiced, and said recession is over. Now though industry is not seeing fall in revenue but there is hardly any q-o-q growth. However this is not something to worry but is an indicator of future risk and suggests requirements of further boost in innovation, more in business thinking rather than technology breakthroughs.

Here are the some of the quarterly revenue announcements of some prominent companies in the semiconductor market.

Lattice Semiconductor has announced revenue of $77.1 million in the third quarter of 2010, unchanged from the $77.1 million reported in the prior quarter, and an increase of 57% from the $49.1 million reported in the same quarter a year ago. FPGA revenue for the third quarter was $24.7 million compared to $24.6 million reported in the prior quarter, and increased 63% from the $15.2 million reported in the same quarter a year ago. PLD revenue for the third quarter was $52.4 million compared to $52.5 million reported in the prior quarter, and increased 55% from the $33.9 million reported in the same quarter a year ago.

Another major embedded systems focused chip maker Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has announced that revenue for the 2010 third quarter was $231.9 million, up 4.0% from $223.0 million for the prior quarter, and up 29.8% from $178.7 million for the year-ago period.

"Cypress achieved its sixth quarterly sequential revenue increase, though revenue was slightly below our original guidance," said Cypress's President and CEO, T.J. Rodgers. "Strong sales, combined with our ongoing cost-reduction programs, led to record gross margin, very strong earnings and more than $100 million in cash flow generation.

"Our business was impacted by manufacturing limitations in our SRAM business, and slowing order rates in PC end markets and our distribution channel. Nonetheless, revenue was up 4% sequentially led by a 21% gain in our CCD division, which achieved record revenues for both our PSoC and TrueTouch product families.

Rodgers continued, "We have seen a backlog decrease as lead times in the industry begin to shrink to normal six-week levels from 12-plus weeks. Our book-to-bill at the end of Q3 decreased to 0.86, in line with normal seasonality and shrinking leadtimes, with MID down the most, and PSoC well above parity."
Analog and discrete semiconductor specialist Intersil has reported a net revenue $219.1 million for the third quarter 2010, a 30% increase from $168.3 million in the third quarter of 2009, and essentially flat compared to the $219.9 million in the second quarter of 2010. Intersil's third quarter revenues ranked by end market were as follows: industrial, 34.4%; high-end consumer, 23.6%; computing, 21.2%; and communications, 20.8%.