Gartner, Inc. has made top-to-bottom revisions to its previously published capital expenditure projections for the semiconductor industry through 2012. In 2008, semiconductor capital spending is now expected to decline 19.8 percent, compared with a 13.2 percent decline previously projected. 

A $3 billion-plus valued new business will be formed with the spin-off of the wireless operations of both NXP and STMicroelectronics. The intention is to enable the new company to better serve the wireless market that requires high levels of investment, according to the companies. The new unnamed company will be fabless, relying on both parent companies and foundries for semiconductor manufacturing. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2008. 

Texas Instruments said that there were 15 recipients of the company's 2007 Supplier Excellence Award (SEA) out of over 14,000 suppliers that were all evaluated according to the program criteria such as cost, environmental responsibility, technology, responsiveness and assurance of supply and quality, amongst others. 

iSuppli Corp. has slashed expected revenue growth for the NAND flash memory market in 2008. Due to the worsening consumer spending environment, global NAND flash memory revenue is expected to rise to $15.2 billion in 2008, compared to its previous forecast of $17.9 billion. This equates to a 9 percent increase in 2008 over 2007 but significantly less than the previous estimate of 27 percent growth. 

In its final 2007 semiconductor sales roundup, Gartner said that worldwide revenues totaled $273.9 billion in 2007, a 3.8 per cent increase from 2006. Its Top 10 vendors list showed that Intel grew revenue more than twice as fast as the semiconductor market average with revenues of $33.8 billion in 2007, compared to $30.5 billion in 2006 - a 10.7 percent increase. 

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said that worldwide semiconductor sales reached $20.44 billion in February 2008 - a 1.5 percent increase from February 2007 and a 4.9 percent decline from January when the industry reported sales of $21.48 billion. 

The delayed formation of Numonyx, a spin-off of loss-making non-volatile memory business units of Intel Corporation and STMicroelectronics that involves private equity firm Francisco Partners, has officially been launched as a standalone entity. Depending on classification, Numonyx becomes the third largest non-volatile memory manufacturer with revenues of approximately $3 billion, according to Q407 figures from iSuppli Corp., down approximately $600 million from 2006 combined revenues. 

Hynix Semiconductor has been reported to be cutting capital spending plans for 2008 by approximately $1 billion due to poor pricing of NAND and DRAM memory devices as overcapacity remains in the market.