back to article Chip sales upgrade from terrible to bad

Global semiconductor sales have improved from terrible to bad in the third quarter, as the industry continues to recover from its massive slide a year ago. Chip sales in Q3 jumped 19.7 per cent to $61.9bn compared to the second quarter when sales were $51.7bn, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association. But Q3 sales …

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  1. MinionZero
    WTF?

    $61.9bn & $51.7bn ... per quarter...

    Wow poor things. I can never understand why there's such extreme gloom at these kinds of figures when most industries couldn't imagine even earning a tenth of this kind of money. If they can't survive on figures like this, then they have way to many pointless greedy executives with their noses in the trough.

  2. sam 16

    Poor things indeed. they are already in big trouble.

    MinionZero:

    Chip fabrication industries need to continually invest HUGE amounts of money in new factory facilities.

    If your making cars, the same tooling line can keep you going for years, but in semi-conductors, a foundry needs "this years" new multi billion pound proccess to cram as many transisters on a chip as thier rivals.

    The old machinary can be used for a couple more years making lower grade chips at lower margins, but the need to pour money into the buisness year after year is a huge strain during bad years.

    Further, these upgrades are normaly done on loan finance, which is way more expensive this year.

    Appart from the one or two top foundry companies that have the economy of scale to do this, most companies are operating at or near a loss. There is some "word on the street" that as a few of the minor houses die off, the big houses will take advantage by artificially restricting supply, forcing chip prices up to more proffitable levels.

    This (probably) wouldn't be a cartelle, rather the smaller houses would follow the lead of the biggest, "because they can".

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