Worldwide chip sales have slipped deep into the mud over the past year and they’ll continue to do so until year’s end. But they’ll begin to improve after that.

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2009 semiconductor sales are down from 2008 by nearly record amounts, but they’re improving. That’s the latest word from the Semiconductor Industry Association, which said today that global chip sales rose in September from the previous month–the seventh straight month of gains.

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Looks like AMD has benefited from the same favorable PC updraft that’s lifting Intel. On Thursday, the chip maker reported a narrower third-quarter loss than expected, thanks to “strong demand” for its microprocessors and graphics chips.

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As the world’s largest maker of computer chips, Intel is considered a bellwether for the wider industry. So the fact that the company’s latest revenue and profit numbers handily beat expectations is a very good sign indeed.

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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.

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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Well, look at that. Floundering though it is, AMD has managed some gains in the semiconductor market. According to IDC, the company’s share of the chip market hit 22.3 percent during the first quarter of 2009, an increase of 4.6 percent over the fourth quarter of 2008. Meanwhile, Intel’s share fell to 77.3 percent, a decline of 4.7 percent.

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To the NAND flash memory business, Apple is a market maker and mover–and an increasingly insatiable one. In 2008, Samsung was forced to reduce its supply of 8GB-equivalent NAND flash chips to other customers to fulfill its obligation to Apple. What’s past is prologue. To wit, reports today claim Apple has placed an order for 100 million 8GB NAND chips from Samsung–an order so large it is reportedly causing a supply shortage.

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More ugly news from the Japanese electronics industry today. Sanyo Electric, the world’s largest producer of rechargeable batteries, this morning slashed its earnings forecast for the second time in as many months.

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January is historically a relatively weak month for the semiconductor industry, so the fact that the industry suffered a decline in world-wide sales last month isn’t unusual or shocking. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the depth of that decline, which was nothing short of grotesque.

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