Wall Street Journal:
Chip Sales to Rise On Consumer Goods, Group Says MarketWatch
November 17, 2006
The global chip industry will "continue to ride a strong wave of consumer demand for electronic products," prompting a 9% compounded annual growth rate for semiconductor sales through 2009, the Semiconductor Industry Association said.
The San Jose, California, trade group estimates that sales will increase 9.4% in 2006 to $248.8 billion from $227.5 billion in 2005. The association sees sales reaching $321 billion in 2009, on increases of 10% in 2007, 10.8% in 2008 and 5.8% in 2009.
Association President George Scalise said consumers now account for more than half of global chip consumption. Traditional electronics -- music players, digital cameras and television sets -- account for 20%; cellphones, another 20%. Automobiles, personal computers and other products push the figure past 50%, Mr. Scalise said.
A specific example of strong consumer impact is that the highest-performance PCs are not for business but for "gaming enthusiasts who demand theater-quality sound and graphics," the association said. Producing those effects requires high-performance microprocessors, graphics processors and memory.
DRAM -- dynamic random access memory -- chip sales are seen as the fastest-growing segment, rising 14% a year compounded from 2006 through 2009. |
