World chip industry grew 1.4 pc in 2002

San Fransisco, Dec 14: The worldwide semiconductor industry inched up slightly in 2002 on sales of computer memory chips following a nearly one-third drop in revenue in 2001, according to preliminary statistics released on Friday.
Global revenue for chips, the brains of electronic systems, rose 1.4 percent in 2002 to $155.4 billion following a 32 percent decline in 2001, said research firm Dataquest, a division of Gartner Inc.

"Weak end markets continue to depress the semiconductor industry, leaving scant opportunities for growth," said Richard Gordon, principal analyst for Gartner Dataquest's chip group.

If not for DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips used in PCs, semiconductor industry sales would have declined by 2 percent in 2002, the San Jose, California-based Dataquest said.

Strong sales of DRAM and flash memory, which is used in cell phones, led to nearly 30 percent revenue growth for Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. between 2001 and 2002, putting the company in the second spot behind Intel Corp., Dataquest said.
With 15.5 percent of the market and an estimated $24.15 billion in 2002 revenue, Intel retained the top-ranked position for the 11th straight year although its revenue dropped about 3 percent. Bureau Report