If Christmas hasn't yet been cancelled a quick look at the latest semiconductor market forecast from Gartner may hasten the process.
Bluntly Gartner's view is that we have yet to see the worst of this downturn and it isalready shaping to be worse, potentially much worse than than the bust which followed the dot com boom.
There is no doubt the past few weeks have set alarm bells jangling. Two weeks ago AFDEC lowered its forecast this year from a 5 per cent to a 5.7 per cent decline. Now Gartner has downgraded a November forecast of a 2 per cent decline to an astonishing 4.4 per cent decline. Sales have dropped faster than bank shares.
2009 will be worse, says Gartner. Research Vice President Andrew Norwood says that unlike the 2001 dot com bust, this recession is much more broad based and not limited primarily to the technology sector.
At present Gartner has not changed the 2009 forecast it issued in November, which is predicting a 2.2 per cent decline, and a worse case scenario of a 10.3 per cent decline.
Either way it will be only the fifth time in 25 years that worldwide semiconductor industry will show a decline in revenues.
Gartner has also issued its 2008 semiconductor rankings. No change in the top four. Intel is still in pole position, but has lengthened its lead over the number two ranked Samsung. Intel's revenues will grow 1.1 per cent to just over $34bn, while Samsung has declined 12.2 per cent to $17.9bn. Toshiba and Texas Instruments stay in third and fourth place respectively.
ST Microelectronics has hopped over Infineon. ST looks likely to hold its revenue decline at 3.2 per cent for revenues of $9.6bn, as Infineon has suffered a 20.8 per cent plummet to $8bn.
Renesas is up one in seventh, Qualcomm has jumped into the top ten from the number 11 berth, Hynix drops one spot to ninth, and NEC improves from 12 to 10.
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