European Semiconductor Distribution Market (DMASS) Starts Positively Into 2016

Healthy demand for semiconductors continues. Italy, Eastern Europe and Germany lead the ways. Exchange rate effects have eased out.

 London, May 24, 2016 – Components distributors in Europe have continued to enjoy a healthy business for more than 2 years now. Overall macro-economic conditions seem to play only a minor role at the moment. Even currency effects, which dominated some of the growth in 2015, have been reduced to normal. The sum of all this amounts to an 8.4% growth in Q1/CY2016 compared to Q1/CY2015 for European Semiconductor Distribution, according to DMASS (Distributors’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Semiconductor Specialists). The quarter ended with record sales of 1.93 Billion Euro.

Georg Steinberger, chairman of DMASS: “We have, for the time being, entered a very stable market environment, with little friction from currency effects and very little effects so far from weak markets in Asia, especially China. Q1/CY16 ended surprisingly well, with 8.4% growth. After last year’s double-digit growth, we would regard this as normalization. Considering the positive booking situation, we would expect strong first half year 2016.”

Regionally, it was positive to note that Italy and Germany, the two biggest sales regions within DMASS, contributed over-proportionally to the quarterly growth. Germany ended Q1 with a plus of 11.7% at 606 Million Euro, Italy with a plus of 19.9% at 198 Million Euro. Eastern Europe continued on its long-term growth path and grew by 15.3% to 265 Million Euro (without Russia). The UK market suffered from its own currency problems and reported -0.4% decline to 147 Million Euro. France grew by 4.6% to 144 Million Euro and the Nordic countries experienced a comparably steep decline of 7.7% to 163 Million Euro.

Georg Steinberger: “The biggest surprise is certainly the resilience of the Italian distribution market. And the fact that Germany “recovered” after several quarters of sub-par performance is also a good sign. It will be interesting to see if these trends continue further into the year.”

On the product-side, DMASS reported double-digit growth in Sensors, Opto, Memories, MOS Micro Logic and Standard Logic. Analog products, by far the biggest segment, ended almost spot on, with 8.7% growth to 579 Million Euro. MOS Micro grew by 10.2% to 394 Million Euro, Opto by 15.5% to 202 Million Euro, Memories by 12.7% to 156 Million Euro and Sensors (key product for automotive and IOT) by 16% to 42 Million Euro. A negative surprise was Programmable Logic, which stayed flat at 140 Million Euro. Discretes and Power Discretes saw under-proportional growth of 1.4% to 101 Million Euro and 3.1% to 184 Million Euro respectively.

DMASS continues to report to members only on Passive Components, Electromechanical Components and Power Supplies, the latest statistics addition to DMASS Ltd.

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.