Semicon update: 2009's on track for cyclical recovery

UK: Unsurprisingly, January’s sales were not particularly strong, down 31.6 percent in value (34.5 percent in units) from the same time last year, says Malcolm Penn, CEO and founder of Future Horizons. 

They were also down, on a weekly run-rate basis, 6.6 percent in value (10.1 percent in units) from December 2008. In both cases the unit declines were steeper than the value, which meant ASPs were UP 4.4 percent on the same time last year, and UP 3.9 percent on December 2008.

This is very good news, given ASPs in the first month of any quarter are always lower than the third month of the previous quarter, thus making the quarterly number phenomenon.

In particular, January’s ASPs are especially weak; they have only been higher than December’s on four previous occasions in the last 32 years, namely 1979, 1980, 1987 and 1992, all during a period of a industry boom.

January’s ASP growth happened in the middle of a massive semiconductor meltdown. That’s unprecedented! Despite the doom and gloom in the market ... believe it or not, ASPs are poised for a strong structural recoverd, all the current down turn will do is to delay, and exagerate, the recovery when it comes.