The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) today released the latest worldwide sales statistics. Overall, chip sales for the first four months of this year are up 3.7%; however, the picture does not look all rosy. According to the article, average selling prices for microprocessors, DRAMs, and NAND flash are declining fast and are offsetting any volume increases. While the accompanying chart does not yield any interesting insights, one key takeaway can be found in the published table. Namely, while year over year sales are up only a modest 1.6%, the year over year sales in Europe, Japan, and Asia were actually quite good, but were offset by a 10% decrease in the Americas. Unfortunately, no detailed breakdown of the increases or decreases is provided. However, the SIA will publish their updated forecast for 2007-2009 in a little more than a week, which might yield a few additional insights.

With speculations running rampant about AMD, and Micron possibly going private, one has to wonder if the private equity firms actually know what they are doing. At the same time, should workers be concerned if their company has gone private or might be going in the future? There is simply not enough data at this point in make conclusions one way or another. But of course, that won’t stop people from arguing. A couple of interesting blurbs on this topic can be found over at Electronicsweekly.com. The first one, titled “It is all change for chip manufacturers” takes a very brief look at upcoming changes in the semiconductor industry, arguing that foundries, IP companies, and design houses provide services of equal value of the most sophisticated IDMs, thus questioning the wisdom of the private equity firms. The second news blurb, titled “Don’t blame the private equity firms, says chip CEO”, contains a few quotes from Altera CEO John Daanec who argues that the boards of directors that agree to sell the companies to private equity firms are those that are indeed making the poor decisions. However all of this might turn out, don’t expect the debate to be settled anytime soon.