
Europe bounces back in global chip market
The Asia-focused rest-of-the-world region bounced the highest closely followed by Europe, although Europe had plunged the furthest in 2Q20 due to the impact of pandemic lockdowns.
The averaged chip sales for September – the average of September, August and July – are a proxy for third quarter sales.
Worldwide sales of semiconductors were $113.6 billion during the third quarter of 2020, an increase of 11.0 percent over the previous quarter and 5.8 percent more than the third quarter of 2019, according to sales announced by SIA and based on figures compiled by World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS). The averaged amount for September was $37.9 billion, an increase of 4.5 percent over last month’s total and 5.8 percent more than sales from September 2019.
However, on a regional basis the year-to-year picture is somewhat bleaker for Europe and Japan. While Americas region sales are up in September/3Q20 by 20.1 percent sales in Europe are still down 9.8 percent and Japan’s sales are down 1.8 percent. China, responsible for about one third of the global chip market, is growing by 6.5 percent helping to drag the global figure up.
Three-month average of chip sales by geographic region for September and August 2020. Source: SIA/WSTS.
“The global semiconductor industry posted solid sales in the third quarter of 2020, reflecting normal seasonal trends and increased demand for semiconductor-enabled products, but significant market uncertainty remains due to the pandemic and other macroeconomic factors,” said John Neuffer, CEO of the SIA, in a statement.
September sales in the European region were up month-to-month across all major semiconductor product categories, with sensors and actuators, discretes and analog performing particularly well. ASICs also grew steadily worldwide on a monthly basis, led by wireless and automotive applications, according the European Semiconductor Industry Association.
Monthly data is given by the SIA as a three-month average although the source of the data, the WSTS, tracks actual monthly data. The SIA and other regional semiconductor industry bodies opt to use averaged data because it evens out the actual data that typically shows troughs at the beginnings of quarters and peaks at the ends of quarters.
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