Midyear earnings calls are mostly complete. 2Q09 was relatively strong across the board owing to inventory replenishment. Companies' outlooks for 3Q09 are generally positive but cautious.
We summed the quarterly revenue for 10 companies representative of the overall wired-communications semiconductor market. These companies include AppliedMicro (excluding storage), Cavium, Ikanos, PLX Technology, Freescale's networking and multimedia Groups, NetLogic, PMC-Sierra, Broadcom's Enterprise and Broadband groups, Infineon's wireline communications group, and LSI's communications semiconductor group. The figure below shows the quarterly revenue trend, including an estimate for 3Q09.
Although the reversal from the 25% sequential decline experienced in Q1 is significant, the second-quarter recovery was weak—only about 6% sequentially. Excluding Freescale, which supplies embedded processors and not communications ASSPs, lifts the growth rate only about 1%. If revenue growth does not accelerate in Q3 and Q4, 2009 communications ASSP revenue will end the year about 20% down, well below our forecast. We expect current inventory replenishment and resumption of demand to pull the market up, however.
The situation for FPGAs is the reverse. We summed Altera's and Xilinx's quarterly revenue of sales of FPGAs for communications applications. While revenue levels in 1Q09 and 2Q09 trail the highs set in 2Q08 and 3Q08, they are above 1Q08 and 4Q08. If the current trend continues, annual communications-FPGA revenue will end 2009 even with 2008's level—about where we have forecasted it to be. The figure below shows the quarterly revenue trend, including an estimate for 3Q09.
Revenue from sales of wireless-communications chips has also held up well. For this sector, we summed the revenue for Qualcomm QCT (their chip business), Broadcom's wireless group, CSR, Infineon's wireless group, and ST-Ericsson. Qualcomm, the largest wireless semiconductor company, grew more than 30% sequentially and its 2Q09 results were even with those of 2Q08. Broadcom's wireless revenue was way up sequentially as well. We expect the company to continue to grow because the first Nokia phones using Broadcom's EDGE chips are finally starting to ship. ST-Ericsson's revenue grew 19% sequentially but is 30% down year over year. The figure below shows the quarterly revenue trend for this group of companies.
Because we exclude Texas Instruments, whose baseband business is in secular decline, and focus on the strongest suppliers, it is unsurprising that the group is doing well. Revenue for the group jumped 30% sequentially in 2Q09 but remains 9% below 2Q08's level. Factoring in growth trends and TI's loss of share, we expect 2009 wireless semiconductor revenue (baseband processors, application and multimedia processors, and connectivity chips) to end up about 2% below 2008 revenue, with growth in connectivity chips offsetting contraction in application and multimedia processors. --Joe
Joseph Byrne, senior analyst
Complete market share and market forecast information can be found in our quantitative reports:
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment