Chip prices scuffles drag the rest of the semiconductor industry
                                                                          Release time ：2007-10-08

   According to the semiconductor industry association (SIA) says, "a few bad apples" will influence the semiconductor industry.

Some types of semiconductor product price alarming prices will affect 2007 semiconductor industry sales revenue growth speed.

The semiconductor industry SIA sales income growth rate is expected to 10%, now, it's expected the number is 1.8%. In 2007, semiconductor industry sales will rise to ABU billion dollars.

In December last year, compared with the price in April DRAM fell 33%; In April the price of flash memory, but fell 35 percent year-on-year sales grew 54%.

In an interview on Thursday, SIA President George said, it has already surpassed the due limit. Under normal circumstances, the amplitude of each year in price shall fall to 20%. At present, the semiconductor product demand is very strong, the price declines so big is not normal.

The price drop seems supra-normal by pursing market share at the expense of company profits caused, everything else is still relatively normal. The factory equipment utilization rate steady at around 80 percent.

The demand for electronic product manufacturing innovation, very strong also no significant change. Chip sales also quite high.

Currently, inventory is not the problem. Global semiconductor product inventory about 30 billion dollars in annual sales, slightly more than 1% of the lower than normal levels. George said, there are many new vendors want to gain market share.

Semiconductor product price from march began to slump. Hard disk industry is also facing a similar price collapse embarrassment.

Micron spokesman Francisco memory manufacturers, said the enterprise market share for preemptive DRAM is a big problem. He said, recently several mainland China and Taiwan province's DRAM manufacturers very positive in market share.

George said, memory chip foundry business also should be condemned. Foundry business production capacity than the industry average, in order to operate at full capacity, they dozen have a price war.

SIA expected, from 2006 to 2010, chip industry in between the compound growth rate will reach 5.5%.