Figures from the WSTS show that world chip sales rose 10 percent month on month in October 2010.
There was strength in many sectors including automotive, NAND and DRAM memories, and handsets.
According to the WSTS, October chip sales were $22.05 billion – that’s up 13.7 percent year on year.
Bruce Diesen, senior analyst at Carnegie Securities Research, said that the three month average rose from $20.6 billion to $21.7 billion – well above the expected $21 billion. He said: “We now expect a 10 percent drop in world semiconductor dollar sales this year and a 13 percent increase next year.”
DRAM chip sales could have been spurred by demand for Microsoft Windows 7, he said.
A price cut by Mediatek led to a surge in volumes of chips for low end handsets, while NAND flash memory hit a record high in October – perhaps prompted by Apple buying a large amount of NAND memory.
Car chip sales rose too – dragged up by an improvement in world car sales by around 10 percent.
