"There are customers that won't allow visits, that won't allow sales people in there," said Mitchell Little, the company's senior vice president for sales, on a conference call.
"It's putting a crimp in the process," he said.
Microchip Technology makes chips used in phone-related products and automobiles.
Other companies said some meetings with clients are continuing as planned.
"Customers are still coming. We had a big group yesterday," said Nina Posadas, a spokeswoman with Flextronics based near Kuala Lumpur.
"We haven't really made any changes to the way we are operating," she said.
The SARS scare threatens an industry that has already been battered by slow sales in the past two years. Semiconductor sales fell more than 30 percent in 2001 and barely rose last year. Some analysts aren't expecting much growth this year.
"SARS will go away some day and the war in Iraq will end some day," said Evelyn Ou, an analyst with Morgan Stanley in Taipei.
"At the end of the day, we still have to see demand recover," she said.



