While growth over the past few years in the semiconductor industry has been driven by IC unit growth being able to overcome the offsetting downward trend of average selling prices (ASPs), Malcolm Penn, chairman and CEO of Future Horizons, recently forecast in the company’s Global Semiconductor Monthly Report that ASPs will start to rise (or even stop falling), with the net result being that unit shipment growth will now be a net contributor to semiconductor market growth. Looking at the current semiconductor market, Penn noted that right now every number except memory is good, with the market and unit growth up 4.9% and 9.2%, respectively, for the first five months of 2008 compared with the same period last year.

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