The European semiconductor industry just reported the third quarter in a row of more than 2bn Euro. According to DMASS, semiconductor sales in Q3 2017 as reported by its members were 2.16bn Euro, an increase of 19% over the corresponding quarter last year. The first nine months have seen DMASS report growth of 15.6% to 6.48bn Euro.
Georg Steinberger, chairman of DMASS comments: “The success story, at least on the sales side, continues. It seems that at least in 2017 the dynamics of growth across the board are unbroken. We are certainly in for a record year already. Newer designs in fields like IoT or e-mobility will see higher components content, so the future looks rather positive from a sales and volume perspective.”
Regionally, Turkey, Austria, Eastern Europe and surprisingly Germany contributed most to the growth in Q3. Germany grew by 19.7% to 681m Euro, Italy by 18.6% to 185m Euro, the UK/Eire was up by 12.8% to 151m Euro and France by 12.2% to 142m Euro. Eastern Europe sales soared 25% to 324m Euro and Nordic sales rose 18% to 183m.
Observes Steinberger: “We do not see big changes in the regional trends compared to previous quarters, except for the fact that Germany seems to bounce back nicely, after a slower start into the year than other areas in Europe”
On the product side, growth continues to happen in all product segments. Other Logic (application-specific), Power-Discretes, Memories, Discrete Components, and Optoelectronics grew above average, Analog and MOS Micro average and Programmable Logic, Standard Logic and Sensors below average.
In detail, Analog components grew by 18.5% to 654m Euro, MOS Micro rose 15.8% to 443m Euro, Opto was up 19.9% to 227m Euro, Power leapt 24.6% to 213m Euro.
Memories (mainly driven by DRAMs) grew by 22.9% to 172m Euro.
Programmable Logic, finally, grew by 13% to 138 Million Euro.
Said Steinberger: “This quarter again saw strong sales in memory and logic products in general, application specific logic and DRAM particularly, but also a nice upswing in Power and Discretes. Programmable Logic remains a bit disappointing, but there is barely a product area that has not grown double-digit.”
“I wish this was all based on merely distribution-driven efforts, but there are price and lead-time effects as well, so not everything is organic”, he added. “Despite the excellent top-line development, with very promising opportunities for the future, the challenges on the distribution channel continue.”
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