Could the global semiconductor industry be heading for a much anticipated recovery? It’s starting to look that way. Chip sales rose in July for the fifth consecutive month on a month-to-month basis, according to the trade group, Semiconductor Industry Association. Which is not to say sales are robust; down 18.2 percent year-over-year, they’re abysmal, but they are showing continuing signs of recovery.
Looks like the semiconductor industry has finally found a bottom from which to scramble upward. In the second quarter, chip sales registered their fourth consecutive monthly increase, the Semiconductor Industry Association said today, suggesting that we may be seeing the beginning of a gradual recovery in the industry. Though worldwide chip sales fell 20 percent year-over-year in the second quarter, they rose 17 percent from the first quarter.
Intel proclaims itself a “Sponsor of Tomorrow,” but the company isn’t going to be a sponsor of the European Union if it can help it. The chip maker filed an appeal today challenging the European Commission’s $1.45 billion antitrust fine against it–the agency’s largest ever in a monopoly-abuse case.
When Intel CEO Paul Otellini said “the worst is now behind us,” he was clearly not referring to AMD. Posting earnings Tuesday afternoon, AMD reported an ugly loss of $330 million, or 49 cents a share–greater than the 47 cents analysts had been expecting.
Three months after Intel CEO Paul Otellini announced that the PC market had reached bottom, the company’s latest financials, which handily beat expectations, seem to have proven him right. “The worst is now behind us,” he noted. And the tech economy is showing signs of muted recovery. The question is: Is that recovery sustainable?
If Intel’s latest earnings are truly an indication of how the tech industry is holding up in the econalypse, then the tech industry isn’t doing too badly (though, obviously, it has seen better days). After market close Tuesday, the chip behemoth posted second-quarter results far in excess of expectations.
Apple put some of the vast $28 billion in cash and short-term investments it has socked away to good use this week by raising its stake in Imagination Technologies. The $5.16 million investment nearly triples Apple’s original 3.6 percent stake, giving it 9.5 percent ownership of the British chip designer whose PowerVR graphics technology figures prominently in the iPhone and iPod touch.
“We would love dearly to win one of the big guys, that really is the smartphone game, it really is a concentrated set of suppliers,” Intel CFO Stacy Smith told Bloomberg earlier this year. “We’re lurking behind every bush and showing them our product line.” Well, the ambushes to which Smith referred appear to have finally paid off: Intel has landed a deal to develop chips with Nokia.
Looks like Yahoo has found its new CFO. This afternoon, the company said Tim Morse will take charge of its finances. Morse, who has served as CFO for chip maker Altera since 2007 and spent 15 years at GE before that, will start work on June 17 and assume CFO responsibilities on July 1.
Welcome news, since Yahoo has been looking to fill the position since Blake Jorgensen said he would step down from the company last February.
Intel’s year of sequential gains in the semiconductor market came to an abrupt end in the first quarter of 2009. According to market research outfit iSuppli, the chip giant’s share of the market fell 2.5 percent to 79.1 percent in Q1. Meanwhile, AMD’s rose about 2.3 percent to 12.8 percent.
A bit of good news today amid the chip industry’s seemingly endless procession of bad. Sales of semiconductors rose 6.4 percent globally from March to April to $15.6 billion, according to the latest metrics from the Semiconductor Industry Association. But at $15.6 billion, they were still about 25 percent below the $20.9 billion reported last April.
You know things are bad at AMD when the company’s schadenfreude over Intel’s European legal woes spills over into its brand messaging. Surf over to AMD’s Web site this morning and you’ll find foremost on its homepage not a message about Fusion, its next-generation microprocessor design, or branding for its various chips, but a gigantic European Union flag.
Ouch. European regulators slapped Intel with an antitrust fine and, as expected, it’s a large one–a record $1.45 billion, which dwarfs even the $1.2 billion fine levied against Microsoft in 2008. The largest ever assessed for monopoly abuse, the fine follows charges that Intel abused its market dominance by illegally inducing PC manufacturers to use its chips over those of rival AMD.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
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