Paris, May 25, 2020 – After the strong rebound in the fourth quarter of 2019, the French semiconductor market remained dynamic in the first quarter of 2020. According to Acsiel Alliance Electronique, the French market grew by 6%, to 468 billion euros, compared to the previous quarter, a performance comparable to that recently published by the WSTS for the whole of the European market.

This 6% growth was in sales to both distribution and direct customers. Among the market segments, the main contributors to growth were industrial with +17% and automotive with +8%. These two segments, which together represented 68% of sales to direct customers during the first quarter, thus confirm the recovery observed in the previous quarter. The same goes for the Smart Card segment which is recovering spectacularly with growth of 27%, benefiting from the dynamic sales of certain secure components for connected objects. Sales intended for consumer applications, IT and the telecom segment, of a significantly smaller volume than the others (12% of sales to integrators), also recorded solid growth. Conversely, the Military and Aerospace segment experienced a strong contraction due to avionics after the rebound in the fourth quarter.

Regarding products sold directly to OEM and EMS customers, good sales results to the major automotive and industrial segments largely fueled the growth of MOS Micros, Analog integrated circuits and Discrete, which recorded increases in invoicing between +8% and 10%. On the other hand, growth in MOS Logic was only +2% and sales of Sensors and Actuators suffered a slight decline of -1% after renewed vigor at the end of 2019.

The good figures for the first quarter of 2020 after those of the fourth quarter of 2019 are encouraging for future trends in the French market. This held up very well overall in the first quarter despite the appearance of signs of weakness in March due to the COVID-19 crisis, particularly in the automobile and general public sectors. The deleterious effects of the brutal global economic slowdown will undoubtedly weigh on the results of the second quarter, in France as everywhere else, but there are solid fundamentals to benefit from the recovery that will follow.

Evolution by quarter of the French market since 2010, in index, in annual moving average – Source #ACSIEL