There's Good News and There's Bad News

And so amid the hoopla and yippie-i-o signalling great growth for the world semiconductor market, where sits Europe in the beanfeast to come?

The news is not so great. Malcolm Penn, chief executive officer of Future Horizons berated European governments, the EU, European semiconductor companies and their trade associations citing a nonchalant attitude to offshore manufacturing and a fab lite strategy.

Keep going in this direction and Penn forecasts the European market's present 13.3 per cent share of the global semiconductor market will sink to 5 per cent by 2014. And that will have severe consequences for the entire semiconductor supply chain.

The European market will show healthy growth this year according to Future Horizons. It reckons 2009s $29.9bn market will flourish and climb to £35.3bn in 2010 and that progress will continue in 2011 to take the market worth to $43.8bn and onward to $50.5bn in 2012 before growth begins to level off in 2013.

For more information go to www.futurehorizons.com