Worldwide Semiconductor Sales Up 6.5 Pct

By Geoff Duncan Published August 1, 2005

The Semiconductor Industry Association announced today that sales of semiconductors worldwide were up by 6.5 percent in the first half of 2005 five compared to the first half of 2004, accounting for a total of $109 billion in total sales. Although sales declined slightly in June 2005 compared to May 2005, June sales were still nearly 1 percent higher than sales in June 2004, accounting for over $18 billion around the world.

Although the second quarter of 2005 was 2.1 percent weaker than the first, most industry segments saw sales above expectations for the second quarter of 2005, including wired and wireless communications, automotive applications, and personal computers. The SIA expects sales worldwide to reach a total of $226 billion as markets enter the historically strong third quarter of the year, which includes back-to-school purchases and presages the holiday season. The SIA also notes the semiconductor manufacturing capacity increased in the second quarter of 2005 after two sequential quarters of decline, indicating makers are increasing output in the third quarter to match utilization rates in industry.

Former Contributor

Geoff Duncan writes, programs, edits, plays music, and delights in making software misbehave. He's probably the only member…

Topics

QuickCharge: This Week in EV

Computing

Microsoft has begun rolling out Copilot Code for building apps with natural language

The workplace-focused vibe coding tool can pull context from emails, documents, meetings, and chats.

Microsoft introduced Code last month as one of the three core parts of its revamped Copilot app. The app was pitched as an easy-to-use coding agent that lets users describe what they want to build in natural language, like an app, a tracker, a dashboard, an automation, or a workflow, and Copilot would build it for them.

Essentially, it's a workplace-focused vibe-coding app that turns existing work into a functional app, and Microsoft has begun rolling it out through the Frontier program.

Computing

AI agents are acting like rogues and causing a huge headache for US banks

US banks block AI agents over fears they could make unauthorised financial moves

Banking

US banks are facing a new kind of digital headache: artificial intelligence agents attempting to access customer accounts and perform actions that may go beyond what users intended. As AI tools become more capable of navigating websites and carrying out tasks independently, financial institutions are scrambling to prevent them from crossing security boundaries.

According to a report published by Axios on October 22, major US banks have detected third-party AI agents operating inside customer accounts without authorisation. Some agents reportedly appeared to attempt actions independently of user instructions. The banks involved have not publicly detailed every incident, and there is no evidence that the reported activity resulted in widespread theft of customer funds.

Computing

Canva enters the AI image generation race with Craft, and it’s thinking beyond pretty pictures

The new model plans layouts before generating images, with precise editing and support for 30 aspect ratios.

Canva Craft Featured Image

AI can generate all kinds of pretty pictures, but getting it to spell a headline correctly or keep a poster's layout intact can be another story. Canva wants to fix that with Canva Craft, its first in-house image generation model. Rather than focusing primarily on photographs, Craft is designed around the posters, presentations, social media graphics, and other visual content people actually create. The goal is simple: spend less time fixing AI's mistakes and more time making something useful.

Canva Craft plans before it generates