The global technology industry may have passed a turning point, showing a marked recovery in recent weeks after an extraordinarily deep downturn, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Production of semiconductors, computers, mobile phones and other electronic equipment is still considerably below pre-crisis levels but has rebounded strongly from the end of 2008 and early 2009, the organization says in a report set for publication this week.
“Even a few weeks ago, we didn’t see the bounce-back in the data,” said Sacha Wunsch-Vincent, an O.E.C.D. economist. “We were still grappling with the size of the downturn. Now, this could be the turning point.”
The slump was even deeper than previously thought, Mr. Wunsch-Vincent said, particularly in Asia. In Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, production of information technology products at its trough was down around 40 percent from a year earlier, according to the O.E.C.D. data, which were compiled from national statistics offices.
After suffering the steepest fall, Asia has also recovered the most rapidly, with South Korea leading the way, the report shows. There, output in May was down only 3 percent year-on-year.
Other big Asian electronics manufacturers, like Japan, have also shown recovery, along with European countries like Germany, France and Britain. Through June, there was no recovery yet in the United States, though the previous decline was less steep than in Asia, according to the O.E.C.D. figures; in June, U.S. production was down around 15 percent year-on-year, but stable from the previous month.
Other gauges of the health of the information technology business have also shown improvement of late. Gartner, a research firm, says that global shipments of PCs fell 5 percent in the second quarter, but the drop-off was only half as big as it had expected. For the full year, Gartner forecasts a 6 percent drop, with a 10…