Not a great Q4 2011 for the European Semiconductor Market.
It experienced, what industry association DMASS described as “an ongoing cyclical correction”.
This resulted in a decline of consolidated sales of 9.1% to 1.35bn Euro, compared to Q4/2010. Better news is that sales for the whole year were up 7.6% to 6.37bn Euro.
Georg Steinberger, chairman of DMASS (Distributors’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Semiconductor Specialists) commented: “As expected, 2011 remained positive and set another sales record for semiconductor distribution. However, the last quarter displayed very precisely the current market trends of cautious ordering behaviour in some and inventory corrections in some other industry segments. The two halves of 2011 couldn’t have been more different, from 23% plus to 7% minus. Predictions under the current climate would be dangerous, but I would not be surprised to see exactly the opposite in 2012 – weak first half and stronger second half.”
Regionally, there some islands of growth still in Q4, mainly in Eastern Europe and due to some unusual effects in Nordic (Sweden), but the main regions all declined between 7.5% (UK) and 25% (Austria). Germany declined by 12.7% to 434m Euro, Italy by 17.7% to 118m Euro, the UK by 7.5% to 117m Euro and France by 14.5% to 96m Euro. Eastern Europe grew by 3% in total to 209m Euro, Nordic by 4.8% to 142m Euro.
Added Steinberger: “Eastern Europe remains driven by low-cost manufacturing and benefits from ongoing production transfers. The Baltic countries have begun to play a more prominent role now with manufacturing shifts from Scandinavia, therefore DMASS will change the reporting in the future and count the Baltic states into the Nordic bucket.”
On the product side, neglecting the aforementioned unusual effects, the decline was across the board, between - Memories declined 5.8% to 119m Euro and standard logic plummeted 21.8% to 24m Euros). Analogue ICs, by far the biggest product group, dropped by 14.2% to 359m Euro, and MOS Micro fell by 13.2% to 279m Euro. Power fell by 10.1% to 137m Euro, Opto by 9.9% to 114m Euro and Programmable Logic by 7.9% to 125m Euro.
Georg Steinberger concluded: “Today, significantly more than 50% of the Distribution business comes from design-in efforts with customers across industry segments. It is apparent that the classical model has changed to a more advanced and all-encompassing support model.”
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