After a few months of downward corrections, the latest Cowan LRA forecast and the WSTS numbers it is based on took on a more positive appearance recently. The latest numbers published by the WSTS are for actual April sales results, and these were made public on June 2. The first quarter of this year was a whopping 58.3% higher than last year.

Cowan's newest forecast for 2010 is the most bullish amongst the forecasters, but he is certainly not alone. Predictions range from 22.6 to 33.4 percent year-over-year improvement compared with 2009. You may conclude that these healthy growth numbers are due in large part to the near-disastrous 2009 since, in fact, they are. However, the mood appears very positive considering that each of the analysts listed by the GSA increased their latest forecasts. In addition to Cowan, that's ten major analyst firms and anyone providing updates for April or later this year sounding more positive than in their previous revision.

Overall, the Cowan model now predicts that 2010 semiconductor revenue will crack the $300B barrier, edging past by a couple billion. As noted above, Cowan expects revenue for 2010 to outpace 2009 by 33.4%. The current quarter is expected to hit $74.2B or 41.4% over Q2 2009. That's nothing like the first quarter but still an extremely strong number. There's nothing soft in the numbers. The SIA released it's newest prediction last week as it expects 2010 to grow by 28.2% to produce $290B of total revenue. Let's hope the weakening Euro and the government debt crises in many of its member states don't spoil these predictions.

More about Mike Cowan

Mike Cowan, the developer of the Cowan LRA Model for forecasting global S/C sales, is a 44-year semiconductor industry veteran. He has a 36-year history at IBM's Microelectronics Division in East Fishkill, N.Y., where he was involved in many facets of semiconductor development and manufacturing engineering, including both technical and management responsibilities.

During his last ten years at IBM, as a senior technical staff member, he was involved in strategy development and competitor/competitive analysis focused on the semiconductor industry, and had developed a number of top-down and bottom-up models to predict the dynamics of the semiconductor industry.

Following his retirement from IBM in 2002 he became an independent semiconductor industry analyst providing his monthly forecasts to The Semiconductor Reporter website from 2002 to 2006, to Future Horizons during 2007 and 2008, and presently to various websites reporting on the “comings and goings” of the industry including EE Times’ Silicon Strategies, weSRCH.com, and the semiconDr.com blog.

Cowan earned both BS and MS degrees in physics at Wayne State University in Michigan, and an MS in electrical engineering at Syracuse University in New York.

For more information regarding the model or the presented results, you may contact Mike Cowan directly at: mikedcowan(at)verizon.net.