ARM revenue falls, forecast remains positive

Second half improvement

UK chip designer ARM continued to out-perform the overall semiconductor industry by announcing a year-on-year Q2 dollar revenue fall of 18 percent and a first half fall of 14 percent.

In its outlook, ARM said that the prospects for the semiconductor industry are "more positive". That, combined with anticipated market share gains across its target segments, led ARM to conclude it's well positioned for the second half of 2009, and to forecast full year dollar revenues to be in line with current market expectations.

"The resilience of ARM in a difficult trading environment is demonstrated by these results for the first half of 2009," said ARM CEO Warren East. "We continue to outperform the semiconductor industry; whilst ARM H1 dollar revenues declined 14%, overall industry revenues declined 30%. ARM technology-based chips continue to gain market share in both mobile and non-mobile applications. 

"Demand for the latest ARM technology remains robust as customers maintain high interest in licensing Cortex -A processors for smartphones and mobile computing, Cortex-M processors for microcontrollers and physical IP technology for advanced process nodes.  With recent signs of increasing industry activity we expect that ARM's trading performance will be on an improving trend in the second half of the year."