HEXUS.sharewatch: chip stocks plunge on demand fears

Our share indices all fell last week as markets once more questioned how the hell Western governments are going to pay their bills, when they struggle to even service their debt.

Until Greece defaults and the US decides to raise its debt ceiling by another zillion dollars, investors will remain jittery. But the general macroeconomic situation is starting to make its presence felt even in parts of the tech market that were previously thought to be insulated from such woes - namely the mobile sector.

Recent reports and guidance from the companies that make the equipment inside semiconductor fabs, such as Applied Materials, has led to broader speculation that there's a consumer-led slowdown in the general tech sector. Previously, weakness in the PC market had, in part, been attributed to people spending money on smartphones and tablets instead, but now there's a growing feeling that even gadgets are feeling the pinch.

As a result, while AMD and NVIDIA had bad weeks, they were joined by the likes of ARM and Qualcomm, who depend far more on the mobile device market for their business. Having said that, Apple once more seems to be an exception to the rule and Google benefitted from better-than-expected quarterly earnings.

The other big loser of the week was Nokia, which has to also announce its attempts to sell-off some or all of its Nokia Siemens Networks infrastructure JV had come to nought. "We believe that the current shareholders are in the best position to further enhance the value of the company," said NSN chairman Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (remember him?).