Just following up with everyone on my last post “Listening for the Bounce in the High-Tech/Semiconductor Market“. The first of the two upcoming industry events, SEMICON WEST, is over. While the Design Automation Conference that is coming up at the end of the month focuses purely on the design tools, SEMICON covers pretty much everything else (manufactuing, test, industrial equipment, solar, you name it).

As you may have seen in my Twitter (@rkstant) posts, EE Times has a couple of “before” and “after” views for the event. The before views are pretty optimistic. Everyone has been talking about how the worst is over and things are looking up. The federal stimulus package in the US has some high tech components, including “smart grid” and “broadband” projects. That funding is just hitting the streets in June and July, respectively. The industry analysts seemed optimistic and touted some new memory orders placed by companies like Samsung, Hynix and UMC for 2H09. And they looked at some continued spending in the Taiwan semiconductor market.

However, the “after” feedback from the industry execs was more cautious. It seems as though must of the industry leads weren’t quite willing to make such definitive, optimistic statements. Terms like “this will be a telling quarter” and “we are still in unknown territory” still prevail. Most still seem to be pointing to 2010 as the target for recovery, with the memory market taking a bit longer (2011).

The nice part about those statements is that they weren’t pessimistic. I’d like to think that many of these leaders see daylight, but don’t want to be caught in the crossfire if things take a little more time. After all, we are now a people that expect things to move fast. 2010 is rapidly approaching. Success in 2010 is reaped on the seeds sown this year. Let’s see if DAC show more good signs.

Best,

Rick