CIOL: What were the reasons for the global 8 percent fall in revenue Q-over-Q?
Price pressures from intense competition in major market segments such as DRAMs, DSPs and NAND flash – key components of PCs, cell phones, and other portable consumer products, which are major markets for fabless companies – limited industry growth despite higher unit shipments for these products during Q1’07.

(Merrill Lynch): Unit shipments came in stronger than expected, but ASP was weaker. For the quarter, Q2 billings represented a QoQ decline of 2%, which is worse than the seasonal average growth of 3%. Based on comments from various semiconductor companies, we believe Q2 marks the trough of this cycle. We continue to believe we'll see a strong rebound in Q3. Our full year estimate for 2007 of 5% growth in billings is unchanged.

CIOL: Do you foresee a downturn in the semicon industry due to the above?

2007 Semiconductor Analyst Growth Forecasts

Company	2006-2007 Forecasted Growth	As of Date	Revised 2007 Forecast	Increased/ Reduced	As of Date
Advanced Forecasting	~10%	Jan 2007	1.8%	Reduced	June 2007
AG Edwards	10%-15%	Jan 2007	0%-10%	Reduced	Feb 2007
Cowan LRA Model	7.7%	Jan 2007	2.2%	Reduced	Aug 2007
Databeans	12.0%	Jan 2007	7.0%	Reduced	June 2007
Future Horizons	12.0%	Jan 2007	6%	Reduced	July 2007
Gartner Dataquest	9.2%	Jan 2007	2.5%	Reduced	May 2007
IC Insights	7.0%	Jan 2007	2.0%	Reduced	April 2007
In-Stat	10.4%	Jan 2007	7.9%	Reduced	April 2007
International Business Strategies	2.0%	Mar 2007	2.0%	-	Mar 2007
iSuppli	10.6%	Jan 2007	6.0%	Reduced	June 2007
Semico	7.0%	Jan 2007	-0.5%	Reduced	July 2007
SIA	10.0%	Jan 2007	1.8%	Reduced	June 2007
VLSI Research	4.6%	Jan 2007	5.0%	No Change	June 2007
WSTS	8.6%	Jan 2007	2.3%	Reduced	May 2007

Note: TSMC reported a 5-10% semiconductor growth forecast each year for the next 10 years, as a prediction to the growing consumer electronics market.