The semiconductor industry's two biggest chip foundries continued their slow and steady upswings in May, posting financial reports that show solid month-over-month growth along with remaining year-over-year lags.

Leading chip foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) today announced its unconsolidated net sales for May were $759.9 million (25.09 billion new Taiwanese dollars), an increase of 11.5 percent over April, but a decrease of 6.3 percent from May 2006.

TSMC's revenues for January through May totaled $3.36 billion (110.95 billion NT), a decrease of 15.4 percent compared to the same period in 2006.

Meanwhile, second-ranked foundry United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) today posted unconsolidated net sales for May of $248.9 million (8.22 billion NT), up 1.09 percent from April, but down 3.34 percent from May 2006.
UMC's revenues for January through May totaled $1.19 billion (39.37 billion NT), down 4.77 percent from the same period in 2006.

While the two foundries' recent monthly performances have reflected a general return to health for the chip industry, a number of market research firms say that the comeback is too little and too late to have an impact on the total industry's full year 2007 performance. Last week, market research firm Gartner Inc. cut its forecas for the semiconductor industry's 2007 performance to $269.2 billion, a mere 2.5 percent increase from 2006. Also last week, the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) group released its spring 2007 forecast report, which forecast just 2.3 percent growth for the global semiconductor market, down significantly from the projection of 8.6 percent growth the group issued last autumn.

By: DocMemory
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