PARIS -- Growth in the global semiconductor industry will remain weak until at least 2010, according to a Deutsche Bank analyst here.
According to Reuters, the French daily, Les Echos, today quoted analyst Masaru Koshita as saying, "the long cycle we have entered is one of weak growth until at least 2010. Any rebound between now and December would in fact be no more than a micro-cycle of small scope and short duration."
A Deutsche official denied that the bank had issued a formal report, saying that the "study" referred to by the financial daily may have been a stray comment by one of its Japanese analysts, speaking in his native language at a Paris conference on Friday.
Traders said the dour comments affected French technology stocks, particularly European chipmaker STMicroelectronics.
According to Les Echos, the analyst said that chip companies refused to acknowledge that "the real problem" affecting this market was demand. "Many firms have invested very heavily in this equipment planning on continuous growth in these sectors...but a lot of this equipment, particularly PCs, has proven far too high-performance compared to the market's real needs," Koshita was quoted as saying.
As a result, the Deutsche bank analyst said, "from now on the dynamic will be one of replacing existing equipment, which translates into longer cycles."
