Worldwide semiconductors sales during November totaled $23.1 billion — a 2.3 percent rise from one year earlier, the Semiconductor Industry Association said in its latest report. Rising energy prices and concerns about subprime lending issues apparently had no significant impact on consumer spending for electronic products during the holiday shopping season, the industry trade association noted.
Consumer products with high semiconductor content, such as music and multimedia players, LCD TVs, and digital cameras, all appear to have enjoyed robust holiday sales, said SIA President George Scalise, who noted that the products all finished the year with very healthy increases.
Still, not all is rosy in chipland. “While total semiconductor sales continue on pace to surpass the record level of 2006, it will take very strong sales in December to meet our forecast of 3.8 percent growth in 2007,” Scalise said. Final December sales figures will not be available for several weeks.
Falling Memory Prices
Although semiconductor unit demand was robust in 2007, the SIA noted that chip prices had declined significantly in several key product segments. For example, RAM shipments, which grew by 25 percent in the three months leading up to mid-December, were largely offset by a 20 percent decline in the average selling price during the same period.
“2007 was marked by continued strong DRAM investments, shrugging off the realities of a market sector in oversupply, slower NAND spending growth, and disappointed hopes of a foundry spending revival,” said Gartner Vice President Klaus Rinnen, who also said he expects a “long overdue” capital spending correction will take place in 2008 that will remedy the current RAM glut.
Semiconductor manufacturers have added a tremendous amount of capacity over the past year, noted SEMI President Stanley Meyers. “This, combined with the overall booking trends, indicates that investments will slow in the near-term, which is consistent…