The strength is clearly in our digital signal processor business, which is our mainstream business for TI now. Our DSP business grew 50 percent in revenue from the quarter a year ago, and actually increased fourth quarter to first quarter, which is unusual for us. |
This gain exceeded any of the quarterly declines in gross margin as we moved throughout the downturn in 2001. This reinforces our belief that TI will experience significant margin gains as we move back into an upturn, and we continue to expect our margins at the next peak to exceed those at the prior peak. |
This is an area of strategic focus for TI, and we were very pleased with the progress in 1999. |
This is especially encouraging given the fact that the first quarter is generally expected to be a seasonally down quarter for the semiconductor industry. |
We are seeing promising signs for upcoming revenue growth. |
We believe we will see sequential revenue growth in semiconductors during the first quarter of 2000. |
We expect all of the business segments to grow. |
We've increased our forecast of digital cell phone handset growth this year to about a 70-percent growth rate. TI is right in the middle of that. We are in two out of every three digital cell phone handsets that are manufactured around the world. |
Wireless should continue to contribute solid growth in the fourth quarter, but this growth is expected to be more than offset by weakness in the PC and PC peripherals markets. |