31% of the participants believed that the outlook for the semiconductor industry is very promising or great. Another 42% believed the industry’s health is just OK and it is steady as she goes. A solid 26% indicated that the industry positive movements are slow but promising. The numbers reveal a 97.7% overall positive impression on the market and a 2.3% negative feeling about the direction or status of the semiconductor industry.

When asked what drives competitiveness in the Semiconductor industry, availability of product and component pricing ranked first and second, followed by effectiveness of the supply chain, superior technology and new product development capabilities. Global Production abilities and Human Resource cost containment were considered of much less importance. The external factors of Component Pricing and Product Availability scaled close to one and half times more important than the internal and more controllable factors of cost, technology and production controls.

Counterfeit product risk was overwhelmingly identified as the most serious issue the industry faces today. Vendor reliability (ability to deliver) and customer reliability (ability to forecast demand) were equally recognized as very important. Over 70% of respondents indicated that vendor reliability is important to very important. This finding supports the earlier findings on importance of pricing and availability. It also supports the issue of counterfeit concerns and need for vendor reliability. The lead free issue, as well as the India and China factors / importance in competitiveness were identified as equally important by just under 40% of respondents.

The overall survey suggests that despite various reports offering dismal outlooks about the semiconductor market, the actual participants (sample included 47% technical and engineers, 17% managers and executives, 17% materials management and purchasing and the final 19% in sales and other functions) feel by a margin of over 95% that the market is strong and either aggressively or slowly improving. This perspective is fairly evenly shared among the OEM and contract manufacturers on one side and the components makers, distributors and other providers serving the industry on the other hand. The survey is also strongly suggesting that the single most important factor in competitiveness is vendor reliability particularly with respect to pricing, availability and confidence in genuine quality.

See results: http://www.vitalsourceinc.com/survey/