WSTS: Chip market shrinking year-on-year

LONDON – Global chips sales in May were $23.49 billion, down by 1.7 percent on the sales recorded for May 2010, according to figures from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization. And thanks to modifications made to the previous month's figures by WSTS, this is the second month on the bounce in which the global chip market has been smaller than it was in the same month in the year before.

In its spreadsheet update including figures for May, WSTS reduced March actual sales figures to $28.19 billion from $28.34 billion and reduced April actual sales figures to $23.41 billion from $23.52 billion. As a result April 2011 sales are now shown to be down 0.3 percent on April 2010 whereas before they showed an annual increase of 0.2 percent.

WSTS also produces three-month-average figures which are published by the Semiconductor Industry Association and the European Semiconductor Industry Association. This makes the sales of any given month the average of the sales for that month and the previous two months. The SIA and ESIA prefer to present this data as it smoothes out the actual data that usually show troughs at the beginnings of the quarters and peaks at the ends of the quarters. However, averaging also masks the impact of sharp falls or jumps in any one month's global or regional chip sales.

On a sequential basis May actual chips sales were up by 0.4 percent on the $23.41 billion sales recorded for April.

This is considerably below most of the results provided by the previous ten years WSTS data. From 2001 to 2010 the May actual chip market has, on average, been 4.2 percent higher than that of April. The worst case was a 4.8 percent sequential fall in 2001 and the best case a 12.4 percent sequential spike in growth in 2006.


Related links and articles:

www.wsts.org

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