Too Soon to call for a Semiconductor Recovery?
This is a repost from my old wordpress blog. I am planning to shut it down. Are we really out of the most dreaded recession after the great depression and on our path to recovery? The answer might be a resounding yes if we look at the recent crop of earnings reports from technology companies, and other data emerging from market analysis firms. In fact, the NASDAQ composite is already into deeply positive territory on the expectations of an imminent recovery. However, a quick dissection of recent earnings announcements from a few prominent semiconductor companies shows that we are not out of the woods yet. The chart above shows that sales numbers are still horribly bad compared to last year, and inventories have declined sharply as well. This means that companies have managed to satisfy the underlying demand by using up their inventories, and will or already have started ordering replacement units from fabs. This explains why the fabs have reported better numbers than the IC vendors. I