Global semicon sales forecast results: Cowan LRA model

Friends, carrying on with my coverage of the fortunes of the global semiconductor industry, here’s the global semiconductor industry sales forecasts, by Mike Cowan. First of all, I would like to acknowledge Mike for sharing his findings and thank him for his continuous tracking of the semiconductor industry.

The just updated global S/C sales forecast estimates are based upon the recently-published July 2009 actual sales number released last Tuesday by the WSTS (posted Sept 1st on their website – wsts.org).

The table provided below summarizes the details of the latest, updated forecast numbers covering the next six quarters, that is, from 3Q09 through 4Q10, inclusively, as well as for the full years of 2009 and 2010.

As shown in the table, the latest forecast updates for years 2009 and 2010 chip sales forecast estimates both increased by +3.3 percent to $205.4 billion and $221.1 billion, respectively, compared to last month’s sales forecast estimates of $198.9 billion, and $214.9 billion, respectively.

These updated 2009 and 2010 chip sales forecast estimates correspond to yr-o-yr sales growth forecast estimates of -17.4 billion and +8.1 billion, respectively, which represent improvements compared to last month’s sales growth predictions of -20 percent and +8 percent.Source: Mike Cowan.

It should be highlighted that July 09’s actual cumulative YTD sales (of $114.82 billion) growth (compared to last July 08’s actual cum YTD sales of $148.29 billion) came in at -22.6 percent, indicating that the model is projecting an improvement relative to today’s 2009 actual YTD sales growth number, for the full year.

Remember that the model is dynamic, that is, it is recalculated each month as the year plays out; therefore today’s latest, updated full year sales growth prediction will not sit still but will evolve over the coming months.

Finally, the model also projects a sales forecast estimate for next month, namely for August, 2009. Thus August’s (actual) sales forecast estimate is projected to be $16.96 billion, which corresponds to a 3MMA sales forecast estimate of $18.38 billion as normally published by the SIA.

In addition to running his forecasting model each month, Cowan also “keep tabs” on a wide range of other S/C industry watchers (including both WSTS and SIA bi-yearly forecasts) thereby tracking what each of their respective predictions are for 2009’s sales growth (compared to 2008).