Global semiconductor sales fall 2.8 percent in 2008, first decline since 2001
Global chip sales fell 2.8 percent in 2008 to $255.6 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. That was the first year-to-year decline since 2001.
The chip industry’s trade association said the month of December showed a sales decline of 22 percent to $17.4 billion as the world’s economic doldrums took hold.
The December results were also down 16.6 from November. The fourth quarter is typically a strong one for the chip industry, but chip sales fell across the board among major industry segments such as automotive, computers, cell phones and corporate information technology products, said George Scalise, president of the SIA. The steepest revenue declines were in memory chips where price pressures offset growth in total unit shipments. The typical amount of dynamic random access memory in a PC grew 44 percent to 1.8 gigabytes, while the amount of NAND flash memory grew 244 percent in a typical cell phone.
