Global chip equipment Sept sales down 10.8 pct y/y
Mon Nov 14, 2005 03:12 AM ET
TOKYO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - Global sales of chip equipment fell in September for an eighth straight month, though the shrinking scale of decline in recent months suggests demand for tools used to make microchips is on a firm recovery path, an industry group said on Monday.
September sales fell 10.8 percent from a year earlier to $3.2 billion, compared with a 19.1 percent slide in August and a 20.9 percent fall in July, the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ) said. The SEAJ compiles the monthly data with another industry group, California-based Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International.
"The year-on-year decline is unlikely to disappear suddenly next month ... But we feel we are moving out of a phase of negative growth," an SEAJ spokesman said.
Major chip equipment makers include Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Tokyo Electron Ltd. (8035.T: Quote, Profile, Research) -- the world's largest and second-largest suppliers of microchip-making tools -- and Advantest Corp. (6857.T: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world's biggest maker chip-testing equipment.
Underscoring chip makers' healthy appetite for capital spending, Elpida Memory Inc. (6665.T: Quote, Profile, Research) , the world's fifth-largest DRAM chip maker, last month raised its capital investment plan for the year to next March by 32 percent to 190 billion yen.
Also, electronics conglomerate Toshiba Corp. (6502.T: Quote, Profile, Research) last month boosted its capital spending budget for semiconductors by one-third to a record 225 billion yen for the year ending in March so as not to fall behind Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. (005930.KS: Quote, Profile, Research) in the cost competitiveness of its cash cow NAND flash memory.
NAND flash chips are a popular storage product widely used in digital cameras, photo-snapping phones and portable music players such as Apple Computer Inc.'s (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) hot-selling iPod nano.
Following are September chip equipment sales figures (in million dollars, with percentage change from year earlier in parentheses):
Value year/year
Japan 1,060.697 (+35.5)
N. America 544.731 (+1.3)
Europe 284.603 (-13.2)
S. Korea 302.847 (-35.0)
Taiwan 579.792 (-27.1)
China 161.960 (-50.5)
Others 274.582 (-23.8)
OVERALL 3,209.212 (-10.8) ($1=118.09 Yen)
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