I always love the Christmas / New Year's tradition of reading the experts'
predictions of what the upcoming year will be like.

Back in Dec 2008 - Jan 2009 (a whopping 4 months ago) everyone agreed that
the total worldwide IC market for 2009 was going to be down.  No surprizes
there.  What the analysts argued about was how much would the drop be.

         SIA                        5.6 percent down       11/08
         WSTS                       2.2 percent down       11/08

         Broadpoint/AmTech         20.0 percent down       12/08
         Gartner                   16.3 percent down       12/08
         IC Insights McClean       10.0 percent down       12/08
         Carnegie ASA               8.0 percent down       12/08
         iSuppli                    9.4 percent down       12/08
         Databeans                  6.0 percent down       12/08

         Future Horizons           28.0 percent down       01/09
         Merrill Lynch             24.0 percent down       01/09
         Goldman Sachs             15.0 percent down       01/09

And notice how their outlook dramatically changed over the 3 short months
from 11/08 to 01/09!

With it now being 4 months into 2009, most stats houses are only reporting
month-to-month sales -- for example the SIA reported a 30.4 percent decline
in sales comparing February 2008 to February 2009 -- but some analysts are
going the extra mile to publically revise down their 2009 predictions:

         Gartner                   24.1 percent down       02/09
                              (was 16.3 percent down       12/08)

         Carnegie ASA              13.0 percent down       03/09
                              (was  8.0 percent down       12/08)

Plus some other new voices are adding their dire predictions to the chorus:

         Semico Research           15.0 percent down       03/09
         Mike Cowan                26.8 percent down       04/09

"The global semiconductor industry is going through one of the steepest
corrections in its history," said SIA President George Scalise in their
press release.  

Scalise is wrong.  

According to SIA data, the last time things were near this bad was in 2001
when the year-to-year worldwide sales of chips dropped almost 50 percent.
Knowing that, this year's 28 percent decline doesn't look that bad now.

I know it's fashionable to be all doom-&-gloom these days, but if we could
make it through 2001, I think we'll somehow make it through 2009.

    - John Cooley
      DeepChip.com                               Holliston, MA