Despite some consumer electronics (CE) market slowness for some devices, the buzz around tablets, especially Apple's iPad, is keeping this CE device market hot.  In response to the enormous popularity and success of the iPad, Samsung, Toshiba and a few others have already begun debuting their tablets to compete with Apple.  However, iSuppli holds that with a healthy first mover advantage of 74.1% of tablet marketshare in 2010, Apple's iPad will "maintain a dominant share in the tablet market at least through 2012." (cf. also Credit Suisse's recent report dated 9/3/10: "Taiwan Hardware Sector: iPad – revolution in the tech food chain")

The US economy and consumer confidence continues to sputter a bit as people try to suss out whether or not there will be a 'double dip' recession.  Regardless of these attempts at reading Wall Street's tea leaves, there are real supply chain data being punched out from the semiconductor industry as back-to-school is underway.

Granted the bidding war between HP and Dell for 3Par Inc. has grabbed the headlines this week (cf. the latest as we go live today from WSJ.com and Bloomberg, or just about anywhere in business news), but there's more to the M&A situation than the mainstream press is picking up.

While economic conditions remain uncertain for Europe and the US, Asia continues to forge ahead.  Evidence of strong demand and sustainable growth in the region includes: recent positive data from Japan's improving GDP (now at 8.24% for 2010, according to DGBAS); favorable currency conditions; improving book-to-bill ratios (up to 1.53 for July) for equipment manufacturers (from SEAJ); and all of Asia's (especially Emerging Asia's) consumer demand continuing to hold strong (e.g., this McKinsey report on Vietnam's consumer growth).

Fab utilization levels have hit record highs (since 2004) coming in at 95.6% for "worldwide wafer fab capacity utilization […] in the second quarter of 2010, up from 93.5 percent in the first quarter," according to the Semiconductor International Capacity Statistics (SICAS) as reported here by EETimes.

As we posted last week, DRAM cyclicity is at it again.  With a commodity like DRAM, that is susceptible to numerous market dynamics, there are renewed questions as to where exactly this segment is headed?  As we've noted, while July witnessed price reductions, the third quarter demand is still expected to pull DRAM into another shortage situation, with iSuppli forecasting "[…] bit growth of approximately 11 percent."  Other analysts, such as Hans Mosesmann, an analyst with Raymond James & Associates, continue to push 13-15% bit forecasts for the remaining two quarters of 2010, as reported here by EETimes Europe.

During July, pricing on computing DRAM decreased - about 15% in DDR2 and 8% in DDR3. gDDR decreased 25%. Falling prices enabled consumer electronics makers to cut their costs for DRAM - on everything from DDR1 chips to graphic DRAM. With SDRAM, DDR1, and DDR2, shortage demands contributed to increased sales volumes. Demand for NAND Flash was sparse, but NOR Flash was very active as delivery continues to be a problem for Numonyx and Spansion.

August normally ramps up back-to-school shortages on the computing side. However, financial troubles in the EU and, to some extent, China, have caused many computer manufacturers to re-vamp their initial demand forecasts. So for memory it may be more of the same this month.

The dreams of providing mobile internet devices to children the world over, but especially in emergent economies, are set to dawn next year, according to Indian government officials as interviewed here.

While on the surface there is some variation in forecasts for the second half of 2010 (2H10), if you dig into the numbers and patterns of what's been coming in from the second quarter reports, there are some important trends that remove any cloudiness: consumer electronics, medical, and next generation ICs and memory are all up.

Shared knowledge, equipment and material exchange continue to intertwine Solar PV with Semi.  For that reason, we keep tabs on the solar market and its possible implications for Semi.