The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organisation reports April IC sales at $11.07bn, compared with $13.74bn for the same period last year. Asia-Pacific managed to grow its sales 12.6% year-on-year to yield $3.97bn. Europe was down 25.8% at $2.28bn, the Americas down 30.5% at $2.62bn and Japan down 34.5% at $2.20bn.

The US Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) released its mid-2002
forecasts. Growth this year is expected to be a modest 3.1%, increasing to
23.2% next year and 20.9% in 2004.
The expectations were delivered by Dwight W Decker, chairman and CEO of
Conexant Systems. He commented: "Last year was the most difficult and
challenging year in the history of the semiconductor industry. So far this
year, we have seen a significant decline in excess inventory and
manufacturing capacity, and the industry has resumed modest sequential
growth, indicating that we are in the initial stages of a recovery."
Drivers will be sales of cellular handsets and PCs and other digital
consumer electronics. Strong growth in Asia Pacific is expected to result
from increased outsourced contract manufacturing and regional consumer
demand.
In Europe, demand is expected to decline 2% this year to $35bn, followed by
22% growth in 2003, 19% in 2004 and 1% in 2005.

The silicon wafer market declined 30.1% in 2001 to a value of $5.38bn,
according to Gartner Dataquest. The leading producer was Japan's Shin Etsu
Handotai with sales of $1.50bn, down 19.4%. Europe's Wacker Siltronic
maintained its second place with $0.88bn sales, down 29.5%.
The top five for 2001 is completed with Sumitomo Metal Industries ($0.71bn,
-29.3%), MEMC Electronic Materials ($0.66bn, -38.3%) and Mitsubishi
Materials Silicon ($0.53bn, -40.1%). The market researchers report that the
picture would have been even bleaker if the 300mm had not showed its first
significant market presence.
"300mm wafer demand will grow moderately in 2002 and will ramp up in 2003,"
says Dataquest's Takashi Ogawa. "As the 300mm ramp looms, major players will
accelerate the move toward the industry's reorganisation. As a result, we
expect the industry's market share structure, which was relatively unchanged
in the past decade, could change appreciably in the next three to five
years."

Capacity, device and application challenges could delay returns from GPRS
(general packet radio service) - a "2.5G" wireless telecom service -
according to Gartner. The application gap means that expectations for the
new technology will not meet expectations as a mainstream service. The
current technology is only suited to business-to-consumer (B2C) and
business-to-employee (B2E) transactions for delivery on mobile (B2C), PDA
and laptop platforms (B2E).
"GPRS will have niche success stories as a technology for B2E applications,"
says Bill Clark, research director for Gartner's networking group.
"Businesses will find that GPRS will be most appropriate for applications
requiring short, bursty transactions, where time-critical information is a
key factor."
The market research group says that a further $6-9bn worth of infrastructure
is need by 2005 to support network loading. This is in addition to the
$113bn already planned globally for GPRS voice and data implementation.
Operators are planning for $2.5bn revenues in 2002 and $32bn in 2005. These
expectations could be missed by up to 50% in Europe and by up to 40%
elsewhere.
"In the end, GPRS and other 2.5G data services will succeed only after
considerable experimentation with new applications," said Clark. "We expect
GPRS to break even in the 2009-to-2011 time frame, long after future
wireless services such as 3G are due to be deployed."

VLSI Research forecasts a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% for the
semiconductor production equipment during the years 2002-2007. This would
give a $100bn market in 2007. Taken from 2000's $60bn revenues, the CAGR
becomes 8%.