Semiconductors . . . Fairchild Semiconductor said first-quarter revenue would fall as much as 5 percent from $353.9 million in the fourth quarter, said it now expects sales to fall as much as 3 percent as orders from makers of mobile personal computers, printers and wireless gear were stronger than previously thought.
Cypress Semiconductor said it expects first-quarter sales to rise about 2 percent from the fourth quarter. Previously, the company predicted that sales would be unchanged. Cypress now expects $178 million versus the consensus estimate of 174.7 million. The firm says quarter has been aided by stronger demand in the wireless and computation segments. The company still expects gross margin to improve 100-200 basis points to 42-43% in the current quarter and "to realize a slight improvement in profitability."
ATI Technologies said it will develop technologies for use in Nintendo products.
Xilinx said revenue for the quarter ending March would be at the "high end" of the previously expected range of $285 million to $295 million. Analysts had been forecasting revenue of $290.3 million, on average. The company added that its gross margin target remained at 59 to 60 percent.
Advanced Micro and Intel street pricing fell last week in the wake of list reductions at both companies. In the spot, market AMD MPUs now trade at list to an 18% discount to list, while Intel MPUs now
trade from a 4% premium to a 20% discount to list. Expect street pricing will continue to decline toward historical discount levels. For AMD the average has been a 40%-50% discount to list and for Intel the average has been a 25% discount to list. Intel will also reduce notebook list pricing this coming Sunday in preparation for its Banias launch on March 12th. However, checks suggest Intel's desktop and notebook ASPs should remain strong in the quarter due to an improving product mix. The Banias launch will also provide a welcome boost to notebook MPU revenues in a period of soft demand.
In the contract market, DDR pricing is now trading nearly fifty cents below SDRAM pricing. 256Mb DDR parts are priced in the $4 range, while 256Mb SDRAM parts are priced in the low to mid $4 range. There is potential for this gap to widen further in the first half of March, before a higher mix of DDR-333MHz and DDR-400MHz parts begins to positively impact blended ASPs. In the spot market, DDR fell 7% Week over Week to $3.60, while SDRAM stayed flat at $3.25. Given that Q1 is seasonally slow for computing, the primary end market for DDR memory, find DDR's current premium to SDRAM in the spot market to be unsustainable.
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