Chip Industry Had Tough Nov '11; Expects Long Term Growth
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) reported a sequential decline in chip sales, when revenues of the industry decreased globally from $25.7 billion in October to $25.1 billion in November 2011.
Compared to last year, the sharp was even greater: The global chip industry sold semiconductors for $25.93 billion in November 2010. The good news is that, on a year to date basis, chip sales are 0.8 percent ahead of 2010.
"Supply chain disruptions resulting from the floods in Thailand have impacted semiconductor sales in the near term, however OEM's are expected to recover production losses over the course of the next few months," said Brian Toohey, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association. "November sales were additionally affected by the continuing European financial crisis which is having a broad impact on other economies and global demand."
The SIA believes that the chip industry has ended 2011 with a gain over 2010. Even if the trade organization believes that there are "near term challenges", it stated that 2012 will bring "further improvement".
November 2011 | |||
|---|---|---|---|
Billions | |||
Month-to-Month Sales | |||
Market | Last Month | Current Month | % Change |
Americas | 4.67 | 4.59 | -1.8% |
Europe | 3.08 | 3.03 | -1.8% |
Japan | 3.88 | 3.82 | -1.7% |
Asia Pacific | 14.10 | 13.70 | -2.9% |
Total | 25.74 | 25.13 | -2.4% |
Year-to-Year Sales | |||
Market | Last Year | Current Month | % Change |
Americas | 4.71 | 4.59 | -2.5% |
Europe | 3.42 | 3.03 | -11.5% |
Japan | 4.16 | 3.82 | -8.2% |
Asia Pacific | 13.64 | 13.70 | 0.4% |
Total | 25.93 | 25.13 | -3.1% |
Three-Month-Moving Average Sales | |||
Market | Jun /Jul /Aug | Sep /Oct /Nov | % Change |
Americas | 4.58 | 4.59 | 0.1% |
Europe | 3.07 | 3.03 | -1.4% |
Japan | 3.64 | 3.82 | 4.7% |
Asia Pacific | 13.79 | 13.70 | -0.6% |
Total | 25.08 | 25.13 | 0.2% |
What compelling reason is their to get new kit for a higher price (new AMD lol chips, hard drives skyrocket).
The market is also pretty saturated (in 'developed' nations) where there is pretty much a PC/Laptop or 2 in every home.
The only real reason to get new computers is for work (computational needs), playing facebook browser games along with games being held back by consoles are still fine.
e8500 + 4870x2, not a single compelling reason to upgrade.
That is, if the article were talking about desktops/laptops.
Phones however, could always be better, and they are more suseptable to damage/loss. Not to mention the 'fad' factor. Growth in phones, but decline in desktops in my opinion, purely due to lack of anything domestic putting a strain on desktop resources.
USB2 is nowhere near good enough. Even USB 3 can be a limiting factor in transfer speeds.
It very much depends on what you use your PC for.
And USB2.0 is fine, as long as you aren't shooting more than a few gigs of data.
I work on PCs full time and most people still have late XP/early Vista computers with first gen dual cores and 1 or 2GB of RAM and they are happy with them.
cpu, any near 3ghz dual core or quad core is good enough
gpu, mid range 5770 is good for almost everything, and some newer at lowered details.
ram, is there a real world difference between ddr2 and ddr3 outside of rendering?
hdd, as long as there is space you are good with whatever
ssd, as long as its boot the sataII is good enough
usb2, for non storage is good enough
now as for phones, the only part that needs to be better is the speaker and mic, i would pay for a quality speaker and mic, as they are the worst part of any phone today.
personally, i just got win 7 64bit for more ram and an ssd. i have 8gb ddr2, and i am already hitting the 8gb range with how much i use when im not pushing my system, i could easily use a 16gb ram system, but wasn't paying 300$ for it.