At first sight, the ESIA figures look like another proof that the crisis is over: August chip sales grew 3.9 percent over July, calculated on a three months rolling average. In its press release, ESIA highlights that demand was strong across all semiconductor categories, with memory devices performing particularly well.

However, a closer look shows that Europe with its lean growth again performs weakest of all global semiconductor regions. Everywhere else, be it in Japan, Asia/Pacific or China, the growth was significantly higher; the Americas led the pack with sales 5.4 percent higher than in the month before.

Semiconductor market recovery continues — at different speeds across regions. For higher resolution, click here

Besides the month-on-month growth, other figures likewise indicate Europe's lagging position. In the year-on-year comparison Europe with a decline of 30.1 percent ranks far behind all others, with Japan being a distant second worst. With a decline of only 2.3 percent, North America has almost ironed out the sales dent. And the year-to-date growth shows that Europe with minus 32.4 percent dropped the deepest among the regions. Again, North America was the top performer with an accumulated sales decline over the months from January to August 2009 of only 12.3 percent.

A factor that aggravated Europe's poor performance was the exchange rate of the euro against the dollar. But even on a euro basis, with YTD sales 23.6 percent below last year's level, Europe would have fared worse than the other regions.

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