The Semiconductor Market: Worst Downturn In A Decade

If all you noticed was the big news that came out of Computex Taipei in May, the PC market seems to be doing great: DRAM prices have fallen, and new 7nm CPUs from AMD and 10nm CPUs from Intel are poised to deliver further gains. But under the hood, the semiconductor firms have taken a collective beating.

- Joel Hruska

Global chip sales fell to $101.2B in Q1 2019, down from $116.2B in Q1 2018. This represents the largest year-on-year decrease since the depths of the Great Recession according to IHS Markit. The largest whack hit Samsung, whose sales fell 34 percent year-on-year as the bottom fell out of both the NAND and DRAM markets. Prices on both of these components have improved dramatically: Memory chips and IHS notes were responsible for most of the plunge, but remove their impact, and sales still fell by 4.4 percent. But this “dismal plunge” was caused by other factors as well, including falling demand in major markets.