Electronics demand may recover late this year

06.04.2009
The current uptick in electronics production may be a first sign of bottoming, but real end-user demand for electronic devices will not emerge until the final quarter of this year, Gartner said in a report Sunday.

"The bottoming of PC-related production is breathing the first signs of hope into the electronics supply chain," said Gartner analyst Klaus Rinnen, in the market researcher's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.

"Still, the majority of the industry will not bottom until the third quarter of 2009," he added.

Almost all sectors of the electronics equipment market remain in decline, according to the report. It will take time for all IT markets to hit bottom, but once they do they can return to growth.

The rebounding process will take around two years, he said.

The Gartner analyst is not alone in his view. Despite some positive news recently in the electronics sector, such as a pickup in chip manufacturing activity over the past month and the strong sales of BlackBerry smartphones reported by Research In Motion (RIM) last week, the overall electronics sector remains in decline.