Growing sense of recovery
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has announced an increase in revenue of 87.9 percent in Q2, compared with the previous quarter.
This news will add to the growing sense of recovery in the tech sector. Graphics market watcher Jon Peddie Research recently reported a significant rebound from the graphics industry and Intel's Q2 results were significantly improved. Stock markets have risen strongly in the past two weeks and both the Dow and NASDAQ are at their highest levels of the year.
Year-on-year, TSMC's Q2 revenue was still down 15.8 percent, but the big jump from the previous quarter appears to confirm the general feeling that OEMs and the channel spent the second half of 2008 dramatically reducing their inventory and now they're re-stocking in anticipation of a rebound in demand in the second half of this year.
"As a result of improved demand outlook, customers' companies launching new products, and customers' inventory restocking, second quarter saw a sharp rebound in the demand for semiconductors across all applications," said the announcement. TSMC consequently gave a bullish forecast for Q3.
Here are a couple of interesting slides from TSMC's earnings announcement, showing revenue by industry application and by process technology. While communications remains its biggest sector, the rebound was strongest in computers.
