SIA ISSUE BACKGROUNDERS

STATISTICS

Issue: Access to timely and accurate data is critical to sound decision-making in the semiconductor business. Programs which provide comprehensive data on a cost-effective basis are of significant value to industry participants.

Importance: The SIA statistics committee has and continues to offer a low cost way for companies to share information on a confidential basis and receive data relevant to making better business decisions. For example, the R&D benchmarking survey would cost a minimum of $25K per company if done by a third party research firm. This could represent 50% of a company's outside quarterly research budget. In addition, the SIA statistics programs have become the benchmark for companies and outside analysts to measure the market, financial, and operating performance of the semiconductor industry.

SIA Position/Action: The SIA has a number of important initiatives underway in the statistics field. Key priorities for 2005 include:

• Manage and produce the semi-annual industry forecast.
  
  
• Continue existing special surveys of microprocessors, field programmable logic, field programmable logic by country, 802.11 chip sets and Broadband surveys. The committee continues to evaluate the semiconductor market to determine if there are other specialized product areas requiring attention.
  
  
• Continue worldwide capacity statistics program.
  
  
• Continue quarterly and annual financial surveys.
  
  
• The committee has developed and implemented financial benchmarking surveys for R&D, marketing expenses and financial operations of companies. A proposed survey on IP reuse has been proposed and is under evaluation by member companies.