Technical reasons have caused European semiconductor sales to slip 0.9% to 1.3bn Euro in Q3/CY16. DMASS cites different quarter-end reporting by some members.
Georg Steinberger, chairman of DMASS commented: “Without the technical effect of different quarter-end dates for some DMASS members (last year’s fiscal Q3 had 1 week more), Q3/CY16 would have been positive, in a similar ballpark as Q2CY16. In other words, 2016 proves quite stable and resilient, compared to record 2015, which was highly influenced by currency effects, and considering the overall economy in Europe, which is not really set to spark a lot of growth fantasies.”
From a regional perspective, the good news happened outside the major economies. While Israel and some other smaller countries grew by double digits and Eastern Europe in general continued to grow, sales in the UK, Germany, France and the Nordic countries declined. The UK suffered significant currency effects and a lacklustre market, and sales plummeted 10.5% to 135m Euro although the market was largely flat in local currency. Germany dropped 4.4% to 570m Euro, France went down slightly by 1.4% to 124m Euro and Nordic slipped 4% to 154 Million Euro. Surprisingly, Italy grew 0.1% to 154m Euro; not surprisingly, Eastern Europe sales rose 5.7% to 260m Euro.
“The aforementioned technical effect may also cause some distortion here, however the trends remain stable: UK is in Brexit trouble, France and Germany experience summer season combined with little inspiration from the overall market, Nordic has its mix of production transfer and summer slowdown,” added Steinberger. “ What remains is an unusually strong South (Italy and Iberia) and more low-cost-production driven growth in many Eastern European countries. Overall, the market is slow but not bad and 2016 heads towards a single-digit growth of around 3%.”
In the products groups reported by DMASS, only Analogue and MOS Micro supplied good news. Opto stagnated, Discrete, Power and Memories declined within the expected range. Considerably weak were Programmable Logic and Other Logic. In detail, Analogue grew by 1.5% to 548m Euro. MOS Micro edged ahead 0.8% to 390m Euro and Opto by 0.2% to 184m Euro respectively.
Power lost 2% to 171m Euro, and Memory fared worse falling 4% to 144m Euro. Discrete semiconductor sales dropped 4.4% to 91m Euro, Other Logic declined 6.1% to 90m Euro and Programmable Logic plunged 7.8% to 122m Euro.
Concluded Steinberger: “Same as last quarter, some special effects influence some distributors in certain product areas, like RF, Programmable Logic and Other Logic (business taken direct by manufacturers). However, on the positive side, there are product areas, which are really promising, like high-end Microcontrollers, some higher end Analogue products and sensors, all of which are key components to the quickly developing IoT market.”
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