Worldwide sales of semiconductors continued on a record pace, reaching $20.4 billion in November, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). Worldwide semiconductor sales increased by 7.2 percent from the $19.0 billion reported for November 2004. Sales were up 1.7 percent sequentially from the $20.1 billion reported for October.

“Strong holiday season sales of consumer products such as cell phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players drove record sales of semiconductors in November,” said SIA President George Scalise. “Sales of flash memory devices – a key component in many hand-held consumer products -- were up by 33 percent from November 2004. Sales of application-specific standard circuits, another proxy for consumer products, were up by nearly 34 percent year-on-year.

Sales of flash memory devices – a key component in many hand-held consumer products including the iPod music player -- were up by 33 percent from November 2004. Macworld says that NAND flash memory chips have been hot products over the past few years because of its use in a slew of consumer electronics products. One of the top sellers has been Apple Computer Inc.’s iPods, which use NAND chips to store songs. Apple said it sold 6.45 million iPods during its most recent quarter, which ended Sept. 24, marking the tenth consecutive quarter of sequential increases in iPod shipments. For the first nine months of this year, Apple sold around 17.91 million iPods.

“The main story of 2005 is one of the growing importance of consumers in driving sales of semiconductors,” Scalise continued. “A recently published list of the ‘greatest gadgets’ of the past 50 years was dominated by products made possible by semiconductors. The growing pervasiveness of microchips in everyday products and a strong underlying economy have combined to create a very favorable climate for the microelectronics industry,” Scalise concluded.