April sales climbed to $21.2 billion from $20.1 billion a year earlier, but were flat compared with March, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Global sales of semiconductors rose 5.9 percent in April on solid demand for personal computers, mobile phones and products using flash memory, an industry group said on Monday.
April sales climbed to $21.2 billion from $20.1 billion a year earlier, but were flat compared with March, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association.
Excluding memory products, April semiconductor sales grew more than 12 percent from a year earlier.
Another major category of semiconductors is microprocessors, the "electronic brains" of devices such as personal computers, cell phones and video gaming consoles.
!ADVERTISEMENT!"Unit sales of personal computers and handsets -- the two largest demand drivers for semiconductors -- continue to be in line with forecasts," SIA President George Scalise said in a statement.
The increased sales came despite steep rises in energy costs, which have crimped consumers' disposable income, Scalise said.
The association forecast unit sales growth of 10 percent for PCs and 12 percent for handsets this year, driven increasingly by overseas demand, he said.
The April results showed significant year-on-year growth in unit sales of both dynamic-random-access memory, or DRAM, chips -- the most widely used in computers -- and NAND flash chips used in cell phones and digital cameras.
However, a price slump in those industries, resulting mainly from a glut of manufacturing capacity worldwide, led to a 14 percent decline in total dollar sales of memory products.
The SIA also noted that the Consumer Electronics Association had found that consumer spending on electronic products as a percentage of durable goods was rising from less than 10 percent in the 1980s to about 15 percent today.
The CEG also estimates that the economic stimulus package proposed by U.S. President George W. Bush and passed by the U.S. Congress could generate about $5 billion in additional consumer electronic purchases.
For April, however, the SIA said chip sales were in line with historical industry patterns.
The Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index <.SOXX> declined 1.2 percent in morning trade. At Friday's close, the index had fallen 1.8 percent year to date, compared with a 5 percent drop for the Nasdaq <.IXIC>.
(Reporting by Franklin Paul in New York and Duncan Martell in San Francisco; editing by John Wallace and Lisa Von Ahn)
