The European semiconductor distribution industry is enjoying one of its most upbeat starts to a year for quite some time.

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According to industry body, DMASS (Distributors’ and Manufacturers’ Association of Semiconductor Specialists), sales increased by just over 15% in the first three month’s of the year. This was the strongest growth since mid-2004.

The value of chip sales through distributors reached €1.38bn in the quarter, which is the highest sales number since 2001.


“The positive trend from end of last year continued into 2006. It seems that the overall positive outlook for the European economy echoed itself in the distribution customer base,” said Georg Steinberger, chairman of DMASS.

Steinberger said, however, there are similarities to 2004, when the business started strong in the first half but flattened out towards the end of the year.

“The strong development in the big four markets of UK, Germany, France and Italy suggests that the year 2006 may in fact have a good potential for distribution growth.” said Steinberger.

Germany steamed ahead with sales growth of 21% over Q1 last year, reaching a value of €439m.

The UK market grew by 8% to reach €149m. The surprise was Italy which grew by 12% to become the second largest European market for distributors with sales of €198m.

Inevitably there was strong sales growth in Czech, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Iberia and Israel, between 69% and 22%.

The most active product areas for distributors were analogue, microprocessors, power and optoelectronics.