LONDON — Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner Inc., has gone on record saying that the 2009 chip market will be "considerably worse" than the annual 4.4 percent drop the market research firm is now predicting for 2008 (see 'Global chip sales to drop 4.4 percent in 2008, worse to come, says Gartner' story).

Norwood declined to share the detail with EE Times because Gartner is in the process of sending out an analysis to paying customers. However, he agreed that most people, in the context of the semiconductor market and its recent history, would take "considerably worse" to mean a double-digit percentage fall. This contrasts with the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization which is predicting the global semiconductor market to grow 2.5 percent on an annualized basis to $261.9 billion in 2008, and then fall 2.2 percent to $256 billion in 2009.

As recently as mid-November Gartner was predicting a flat 2008 compared with 2007 and a market contraction of just 2 percent. "That just shows you how quickly things have got bad – in just three or four weeks," said Norwood. He added that whereas some analysts have spoken of 10 to 20 percent sequential market falls in Q4 the latest numbers indicate a 25 percent sequential fall.

"Our numbers are very different from some other analysts," said Norwood indicating that this is because Gartner's soundings were taken more recently. "They [the other analysts] are not capturing what has happened."

Norwood said that after such a steep fall in Q4 it could only be expected that the same will happen again in Q1 2009. "We also see Q2 down sequentially. The market will begin to climb again in Q3 but from a low base."

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