Smooth September for IC design houses

TAIPEI, TAIWAN: For the fourth successive month, it will be record revenues for IC design house Realtek Semiconductor this month too. The September revenues for the company are expected to zoom in fact owing to the steep rise in demand for PCs and notebooks.

Realtek would not be alone in these good times with players like Richtek Technology, Global Mixed-mode Technology (GMT) and Leadtrend Technology also set to post record revenues for the second consecutive month.

Since the second quarter onwards, Realtek has had shipments of PC peripheral and networking chips move up considerably. The current scenario has helped the company increase its market share significantly. Now with shipments of WLAN chips are on the rise, fourth-quarter revenues at Realtek may not decline as feared.

Meanwhile, the peer companies such as Richtek, GMT and Leadtrend are also seeing orders for analog IC climbing. The situation has been attributed to the low levels of inventory level at the global analog IC market. Further, energy saving criteria for terminal devices having brought into a stricter regime, the industry sees the need to re-design analog ICs. Demand therefore has started going up. Industry sources add that Taiwan-based analog IC designers are optimistic about the outlook for fourth-quarter 2009 and the whole of year 2010.