Semiconductor market statistician Mike Cowan now predicts 2009 global semiconductor sales will be US$196.2 billion, up by 1.9% from the previous month's forecast estimate of US$192.5 billion.

With few tools in development for the EUV mask infrastructure, Sematech has said it will convene a meeting during SEMICON West to garner financial support from companies and government sources. The goal is to entice commercial suppliers to develop EUV mask blank inspection, mask defect review, and mask pattern inspection tools.

Over the past several years, IDMs have seen the price of silicon fabrication fall, while the cost of packaging, assembly and test has steadily been on the rise.

Sales of semiconductors in Europe in May again underperformed other regions, according to an analysis of the figures by the Semiconductor Industry Association provided by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization.

NEC Electronics, which has inked an integration contract with fellow chip maker Renesas Technology, is eyeing either Toshiba or Panasonic as its partner in developing an advanced semiconductor system, President Junshi Yamaguchi said.

Standard Microsystems Corporation (SMSC) has announced plans to outsource some of its production test operations to Asian suppliers. The transfer of the production test operations is expected to improve the company's gross margin once completed at the end of its fiscal year.

NEC Electronics' semiconductor orders will increase "several percent" next quarter, helped by demand for chips used in cars and liquid- crystal displays, President Junshi Yamaguchi said.

For the current third quarter of the 2009 fiscal year Infineon now expects a Combined Segment Result approaching break-even with revenues increasing by a low-teens percentage sequentially.

Aviza Technology announced that is has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as it goes ahead with efforts to sell certain of its assets to Sumitomo Precision Products.

The ever-optimistic Kinam Kim of Samsung Electronics noted that some people in industry say the limit of scaling is ~5 nm, to which he said, "I do not agree."

As if the current downturn weren't challenging enough, the semiconductor industry is also headed for increasing challenges from higher design costs and production at smaller geometries, according to Aart de Geus, chairman and CEO of Synopsys.

Pioneering Taiwan industry leader Morris Chang says better focus is needed. "I think that the Chinese side is still intent on building their own integrated supply chain. They are assisting their design companies and their foundries. It's such a shortsighted policy..."

The past several semiconductor downturns have resulted in transitions from one generation of packaging to the next. This one's no exception.

Nikon has said it will reorganize its lithography operations, cutting 800 production workers in Japan and 200 marketing and support staff worldwide. By October, Nikon plans to combine four production subsidiaries into two, focused on IC and display equipment.

Mentor Graphics has reported a narrower loss for its fiscal first quarter on higher sales, and its top executive said the semiconductor market appears to have stabilized.

Japanese electronics giant Toshiba plans to reduce fixed costs 10% more than previously announced, a news report said on Sunday.

Axcelis Technologies, a supplier of ion implantation and cleaning systems, has announced a global workforce reduction of approximately 235, or 20% of its employees, since year end 2008.

Tessera Technologies has said that it won a patent dispute over small-format semiconductor packaging products, with the International Trade Commission issuing a cease-and-desist order against rivals Motorola, Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor and Spansion.

Semiconductor packaging/assembly/test companies are gently ratcheting up their manufacturing capacity, but it won't be enough to prevent a culling of the herd, with nearly 20 (mostly older) facilities likely to be shuttered within a span of two years, according to new analyses from Gartner.

Semiconductor equipment maker Applied Materials swung to a loss in the fiscal second-quarter as sales plunged a less-than-feared 53% in a tough environment for the chip sector.

After a massive capex splurge on its semiconductor division over the last three years, Toshiba is radically cutting back its chip investments over the coming year.

China's contract chipmakers, battered by a sharp downturn in demand for semiconductors, will survive the recession and become increasingly competitive over time, according to an Accenture executive.

"The global economic slowdown continues to limit demand for all semiconductor devices," said Mario Ruscev, CEO of FormFactor.

Semiconductor designer ARM Wednesday reported a 10% fall in first quarter dollar sales as consumer demand for electronic products continued to suffer, but said there are signs of an improving trend in the semiconductor market.

VLSI Research reported a 28.6% decline in probe card revenues in 2008, with the economic downturn and sharp cutbacks within the memory sector having "a seriously detrimental impact" on the market.

KLA-Tencor has announced operating results for its third quarter of fiscal 2009 (ended on March 31, 2009). KLA-Tencor reported a GAAP net loss of US$83 million and a GAAP loss per share of US$0.49 on revenues of US$310 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2009.

Lam Research has revealed its third quarter financial results, indicating a swing to loss as revenues plunged 72% during the three-month period.

Novellus Systems Chief Executive Richard Hill said the chip equipment market may have reached a bottom and provided second-quarter guidance above Wall Street estimates.

MEMC Electronic Materials shares jumped on Friday after the silicon wafer maker posted a first-quarter profit helped mainly by a hefty tax gain.

Equipment supplier EV Group said that strong equipment orders in the last quarter have led to plans to increase production capacity with an extra working shift, starting near the end of April. New orders have exceeded the equipment suppliers forecasts, with demand coming from 3D IC through-silicon via (TSV) and nanoimprint lithography markets.

Toshiba has denied a newspaper report that it will increase capital by 500 billion yen (US$5 billion) this year to strengthen its semiconductor business.

Japanese electronics giant Toshiba has said it is to cut a further 3,900 temporary jobs by March 2010 to cope with the global economic downturn. The news came as it said it expected to report a net loss of 350bn yen (US$3.5bn) for the year to March 2009.

In its third layoff in recent times, silicon wafer supplier MEMC Electronic Materials has cut about 200 more jobs, according to a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to IC Insights' update to its 2009 forecast, released Thursday, the "perfect storm" of negative factors that have damaged business in the first half of 2009 will bring about a much more "friendly" environment for the IC industry in the second half of the year.

KLA-Tencor has introduced the TeraScanXR, bringing high-resolution reticle-, aerial-, and wafer-plane inspection capability to the 32-nm node.

Applied Materials said on Monday the value of a sales agreement to supply solar production equipment to a private buyer has been slashed to US$250 million from US$1.9 billion due a worsening global economy.

As per Taiwan labor law, we issued documents on April 3 to over 200 former employees certifying that their employment was terminated due to deteriorating business conditions.

...In the long run, they say, there will be only three viable entities, at least at the leading edge of chipmaking: Samsung in memory chips, Intel in microprocessors and TSMC in foundries. The rest will be "nationalistic" ventures in need of regular government bail-outs.