San Jose, CA – The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) released figures for worldwide sales of chips in March.
It’s mostly bad news, mitigated by the fact that sales were up 3.3 per cent from February 2009.
The SIA said sales in March were $14.7 billion and for the whole first calendar quarter of this year amounted to $44 billion – down 29.9 percent from the first calendar quarter of 2008.
Sales in Japan sharply fell, while in other geographies there were month to month gains.
SIA president George Scalise said that there are some bright spots as far as smartphones and netbook PCs went. But, he said: “There are no clear signs of early firming of demand in other major end markets such as automotive, corporate information technology, and consumer electronics.”
He continued: “We expect economic stimulus measures in the US combined with other countries will begin to impact sales as we enter 2010.” We think he means for the better.
| March 2009 ($ billions) | |||
| Year-to-Year Sales | |||
| Market | Last Year | March 2009 | % Change |
| Americas | 3.32 | 2.58 | -22.2% |
| Europe | 3.35 | 2.18 | -34.9% |
| Japan | 4.22 | 2.52 | -40.2% |
| Asia Pacific | 10.04 | 7.38 | -26.5% |
| Total | 20.94 | 14.67 | -29.9% |
