Figures from the WSTS show that worldwide sales of semiconductors in June amounted to $17.2 billion, up from $16.6 billion in May.
There are slight signs of recovery but sales fell 24.5 percent in June 2009 compared to the same month last year.
Bruce Diesen, senior analyst at Carnegie Securities Research, said that PC, automotive and microprocessor chips improved in May, and automotive sales are expected to grow in the third quarter of this year.
World car sales fell only six percent year on year in June, and perhaps fell only one percent year on year in July.
Telecom chip sales were weak, as too were smart phone and low end handset chips. Memory chip sales remained flat, and LCD TV chips weakened said Diesen.
He is predicting a 15 percent fall in total semiconductor dollar sales in 2009. One of the problems with semiconductor sales during the last two or three months is that improvement overall may be caused by inventories being exhausted, rather than new demand.
However, Diesen thinks that the Korean semi giants – Samsung and Hynix – have completed their inventory corrections and built some stocks in June for the first time this year.
