(Reuters) - The worst-ever slump in the semiconductor industry persisted in September as sales dropped 2.5 percent, to $10.2 billion, but the magnitude of the month-to-month decline continued to moderate, suggesting the end of the downturn is nearly at hand, an industry group said. Japan and the Americas were most affected, with sales declining more than 6 percent in both regions, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said in its monthly report on chip sales. Sales in Europe fell less than 1 percent, however, while sales actually rose 2.6 percent in the Asia-Pacific region.

Shipments of all types of products to the United States were temporarily disrupted following the Sept. 11 air attacks, possibly contributing to the sharp decline in U.S. semiconductor sales, the group said. More striking than the month-to-month drop is the comparison to Sept. 2000, when chips were pouring out of factories, feeding enormous expectations for sales of computers, mobile phones, and other electronics.

Sales tumbled more than 44 percent since last September, when monthly global semiconductor sales were $18.44 billion.
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Palm, Inc. has kicked off the holiday season with product demonstrations and a promotional offer that showcase Palm's dual-expansion architecture. With the purchase of a Palm m125, m500 or m505 handheld, shoppers can mail in for a free 16MB Panasonic Secure Digital (SD) expansion card and $250 worth of coupons for additional expansion products. The promotion starts today and runs through Jan. 7, 2002. In addition, Palm has lowered the price on its Palm m505 color handheld, resulting in an estimated street price of $399 (previously $449).

As part of the promotion, Palm, the world's leading provider of handheld computers, is encouraging shoppers to try out the dual-expansion capabilities with in-store and sidewalk demonstrations across the country. The holiday promotion is a mail-in offer. Customers submit the redemption form (available at participating retails stores), the original UPC barcode from the Palm handheld box, and a copy of the sales receipt dated between Nov. 1, 2001 and Jan. 7, 2002. All requests must be postmarked by Feb. 7, 2002. Palm will send the customer the free Panasonic SD expansion card and the coupon book. The coupon book includes $250 in savings on expansion products from partners such as Corex, Cross, FranklinCovey, Franklin Electronic Publishers, Handmark, Hewlett-Packard Company, Intel, Pocket Express, Rand McNally, Northstar Mobile, MidWest PCB Designs, and Novatel Wireless. This offer is valid only, where permitted, in the United States, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands and Canada.
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VIA Technologies, Inc, has announced the launch of the VIA ProSavageDDR P4M266, the first core logic chipset with integrated graphics for the Intel Pentium 4 processor. Harnessing industry-leading DDR (Double Data Rate) SDRAM memory and the rich 2D/3D quality of the enhanced S3 Graphics ProSavage8™ core with effective AGP 8X bandwidth, the VIA ProSavageDDR P4M266 raises the performance bar for cost effective desktop computing and provides significant headroom for running the demanding software applications of the future. The VIA ProSavageDDR P4M266 also boasts the latest South Bridge technology with first to market innovations like cost saving integrated 3Com® networking in the VT8233C and the introduction of Ultra ATA-133 in the VT8233A. Ultra ATA-133, offering 33% more bandwidth between hard drive and CPU, enables the VIA ProSavageDDR P4M266 to deliver more performance in data intensive applications like business productivity software than rival mainstream desktop platforms.

For OEMs and System Integrators, development costs are minimized by the comprehensive S3 Graphics driver set and the flexibility of the VIA Modular Architecture Platform (V-MAP) with a choice of pin compatible South Bridge designs and an optional external AGP port enabling a variety different system configurations based on the same platform.
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