A recovery is under way for the consumer electronics industry, but sustainable recovery patterns will not be seen until next year, a research house said yesterday.
“Much uncertainty continues to rest on macroeconomic recovery and the effectiveness of government stimulus packages, especially when that stimulus runs out,” Gartner Inc said in a statement yesterday.
“Almost all sectors of the electronic equipment market have now hit bottom and await signs of ‘first growth’ in comparison with the same quarter last year,” Klaus Rinnen, managing vice president at Gartner’s semiconductor manufacturing group, said in the statement.
The first signs of growth were led by seasonal buying patterns in the PC market during the third quarter, although other major sectors will not begin to show first growth until next year, Rinnen said.
“Electronics vendors and their suppliers must give careful attention to the expected recovery pattern of each sector, and a separate response must be planned for each,” said Jim Tully, vice president at Gartner. “In particular, new product introductions should be synchronized with the expected sequence of the recovery.”
Having bottomed out in the first quarter, a sustainable recovery is expected in the third quarter next year.
The overall PC forecast has been revised upward, especially for the US and China, in light of the continued strength of the home PC market and the improving outlook for the global economy, Gartner said.
Meanwhile, the mobile phone sector is now predicted to be the first sector to show sustainable recovery, starting in the first quarter next year.
Gartner expects mobile phone unit production to decline only 8 percent this year, which is 4 percentage points lower than the May forecast.
The rebound has largely come from demand for basic phones targeted at emerging markets, particularly China, and for smartphones, which continue to perform well as competition increases and prices come down, the statement said.
As for auto electronics, the researcher said more evidence of recovery in the general economy was needed before any strong growth trends could emerge for the automotive sector.
“Although the first signs of recovery are starting to appear for the electronics industry, the damage from the current industry recession will be felt for a long time,” Rinnen said. “This is seen in our current five-year semiconductor revenue forecast, which does not show recovery to 2007 levels until 2012.”
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