European Semiconductor Distribution Market (DMASS) Sees a Good Start into 2014

Q1/CY14 grew by 7.7% over Q1/CY13. Germany recovered from unusual weakness. Discretes & Power outshine other technologies.

 London, May 30, 2014The European semiconductor distribution industry seems to be back on its track of slowly strengthening its position in the European high-tech industry. According to DMASS (Distributors’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Semiconductor Specialists) semiconductor distribution sales in Q1/CY14 grew by 7.7% to 1.6 Billion Euro. Specifically core markets in Western Europe have stabilised.

 Georg Steinberger, chairman of DMASS, reviewed the results: “The weak forces of 2012 and 2013 are behind us. In most of the major regions, the market enjoyed high single- digit or even double-digit growth. The continued average selling price pressure notwithstanding, distribution shows a good performance. Order books are full, we are looking ahead to a very positive 2014.” 

 From a regional perspective, the main message is that Germany is slowly recovering from its lacklustre performance over the last 2 years. Germany grew by 6.6% to 511 Million Euro, representing now 32% of the total market. Similarly, the Italian market is recovering from its macro-economical crisis and grew by 12.7% to 157 Million Euro. UK sales increased by 10.6% to 136 Million Euro, France grew by 7.6% to 124 Million Euro and Eastern Europe (w/o Russia) by 12.5% to 178 Million Euro. Structural reasons in the Nordic region resulted in a decline of sales by 4.6% to 146 Million Euro.

Georg Steinberger: “It seems that the crisis mode in some Western European countries is over – Italy and Spain have reported double-digit growth rates, catching up with their old strength. Germany slowly regains its old position although the last quarter still was under-average.”

 Looking at product categories, commodities did surprisingly well – Discretes grew by 16.9% (90 Million Euro), Power Discretes by 14.5% (166 Million Euro), Standard Logic by 9.7% (30 Million Euro) and Standard Analog by 7.1% (377 Million Euro). Optoelectronics grew by 9.1% (158 Million Euro), here first and foremost LEDs, which increased by double digits. While most Memories suffered from price weakness and stayed flat (+1% to 123 Million Euro), MOS Micro enjoyed a 10.7% growth, to 334 Million Euro. Programmable Logic again proved disappointing, with a decline of 3.8% to 124 Million Euro.

Georg Steinberger: “The clearest trend in semiconductor distribution at the moment seems to be the shift from low-end MCUs and Stand-Alone DSPs to 32-Bit architectures, predominantly ARM. Also very positive is the development of High-Power LEDs for the various lighting market segments. Programmable Logic on the other hand still waits for its final recovery – after six consecutive quarters of below-average performance.”

 About DMASS

DMASS (Distributors’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Semiconductor Specialists), a European non-profit organisation, is the only industry body that collates detailed semiconductor distribution market data on a quarterly basis by country and product groups such as microcontrollers, flash memories, analog components and many more. DMASS figures are collected and consolidated by Data Dynamics Ltd.

DMASS, founded in 1989, provides its members with a reliable statistical tool to evaluate their relative mass-market performance. The organisation currently consists of 35 active members and represents between 80% and 85% of the total European distribution market, depending on the regions. To continuously increase its European market coverage, DMASS welcomes new membership applications from distributors and semiconductor manufacturers.