Semiconductor industry's fast recovery in 3rd Q 09 is due to processor and DRAM demand

Samsung and Hynix, both memory chips vendors have reported more than 25% growth in 3rd quarter 2009 compared to 3rd quarter 2008. Sequentially Hynix has reported 15% growth and Samsung 21% growth. The combined revenue of Hynix and Samsung is 8.08 billion US$, much of this is from DRAM and NAND flash. Taiwanese DRAM chip maker Powerchip Semiconductor reported 130 million US$ revenue in Oct 2009 up by 62.8% compared to Oct 2008. Elpida's revenue reports are not yet out, it can be easily estimated to be in line with other DRAM vendors. DRAM is mainly driven by growth in sales of netbooks and notebooks computers powered by Intel's atom and other processors for mobile applications.

While DRAM is the only chip-sector witnessing both quarterly and sequential growth in 3rd quarter of 2009, the rest of the semiconductor industry's revenue is still 15% lower than the previous year's same quarter.

If the DRAM revenue continues to grow at same rate, most of the analyst's prediction might turn out to be highly pessimistic.

After DRAM and Processor, consumers IC market is showing signs of fast recovery.

Check our 3rd quarter 09 semiconductor industry revenue table for details at
http://www.eeherald.com/section/semiconductor_industry/vendor_ranking.html