April sales show continued industry growth and are surpassing our expectations for 2000,
A number of growth trends in the Asia Pacific market are positive due to continued outsourcing to contract manufacturers located in the region.
While there are lingering concerns about the effects of high energy prices and the impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the US, end markets for semiconductors continue to be very strong.
Although business investment has yet to pick up, consumer confidence and inventory replenishing continue to rise, driving the early stages of the overall recovery,
While information technology products will continue to be the largest market sectors for semiconductors, consumer products will be the major growth-drivers in the years ahead,
Continued steady growth across the industry is exhibited in May chip sales and, as announced in our forecast last month, we expect the industry to close the second quarter with growth of 4.7 percent.
While the computation sector is down, all other sectors including wireless and consumer continue to thrive. This increase drove the sales of such products as flash, digital signal processors, application-specific products and analog.
We expect the modest growth we are experiencing in the first half of the year to continue throughout the remainder of 2002.
The oversupply of some semiconductor products, such as memory chips, has depressed sales revenue, ... However, we are still optimistic about the industry's position, because the demand for newer and more powerful chips continues to increase.