Global sales of semiconductors — the chips that go inside mobile phones, computers and other electronics — set a record high in 2014, and the data for sales during the final month of the year hasn’t even been tabulated yet.
Chip Sales Through November Outpaced All of 2013
With one month still to count, 2014 was already the best year ever by revenue for chip companies.
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The Semiconductor Industry Association, a chip industry lobbying group, said that as of November, chipmakers had sold $307.6 billion worth of chips. That’s $2 billion more than the $305.6 billion reported for all of 2013, the chip industry’s best year by revenue. Sales during the month of November clocked in at $29.7 billion, amounting to an increase of nine percent over November of 2013.
The data was compiled by the nonprofit organization World Semiconductor Trade Statistics for the SIA. It forecast global sales for the year to finish at $333 billion, with growth expected to continue into 2016.
What’s driving the increase? Demand for chips in the Asia-Pacific and Americas regions, which in November grew by 12 percent and 11 percent respectively versus 2013. Sales in Europe rose 3.4 percent, while Japan declined by nearly five percent.
And while the SIA didn’t point to any specific types of chips leading the growth, data from the research firm IHS, which also tracks chip sales, suggested last month that two categories have been in especially high demand during the year: Memory chips and lighting chips.
In December, IHS called out flash memory — chips used to store data in phones, cameras and thumb drives — as well as another type of memory typically used in computers and phones called DRAM, predicting revenue for both would grow by more than 30 percent.
IHS also said that sales of light emitting diode, or LED, chips — used in displays and light bulbs — were expected to grow by 11 percent, a 13th consecutive year of growth.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
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