SIA: Semiconductor sales down

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported yesterday that 2008 global semiconductor sales were down 2.8% from the previous year, representing a $1.2 billion decrease in overall revenue.

SIA's president George Scalise said in a statement that the recession has weakened the demand for all of the major drivers of semiconductor sales, such as Automotive products, PCs, cell phones, and corporate IT products.

"Once again," Scalis said, "The steepest revenue declines were in the memory sector where price pressure more than offset significant growth in total bit shipments...The memory content of cell phones and PCs continued to increase dramatically driving large increases in total bit shipments. Over the past twelve months, DRAM content of the typical PC grew by 44 percent to an average of 1.8 gigabytes, while the NAND content of a typical cell phone increased by 244 percent. However, severe price pressure resulted in significant declines in revenues for these product lines."