Semiconductor sales up 9 per cent - cell-phone sales top 1 billion

Mar 5, 2007, 17:23 GMT

San Francisco - Global semiconductor sales for January rose 9.2 per cent to 21.47 billion dollars, up from 19.66 billion dollars a year earlier thanks largely to surging sales of memory chips, the Semiconductor Industry Association said Monday.

The strongest gains came in the Asian-Pacific region where sales rose 15 per cent to 10.49 billion dollars. Japan sales climbed 3.8 per cent to 3.79 billion dollars, and European sales rose 9.4 per cent to 3.48 billion dollars. Chip sales in the Americas fell 0.1 per cent to 3.71 billion dollars.

The trade group said that the launch of Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system, which requires higher power computers to run efficiently, may have contributed to the jump. SIA President George Scalise also said that consumers benefited from a steady decline in prices.

'The average price of both desktop and laptop computer systems declined by more than 9 per cent in 2006, even as the speed and functionality of these systems was enhanced,' he said.

The Silicon Valley-based group also put global cell-phone shipments last year at 1.02 billion, more precise than the one billion-plus figure given when the SIA released December chip sales last month. It also predicted a 10 to 15 per cent growth in unit sales this year. Scalise estimated that cell-phones alone generated some 40 billion dollars worth of demand for semi-conductors last year.