After a year in which the Dow Jones dipped from 12,500 to below 9,000, when the oil price went from $147 to $40, and the £ went from 2 to the $ to 1.5, it takes a brave soul to forecast the semiconductor market in 2009. Let alone forecast it to a decimal point.
Which is why the comment of Malcolm Penn, CEO of Europe's leading semiconductor analysts Future Horizons, is particularly wise: "To put a decimal point to a forecast figure in these circumstances is just ridiculous."
Penn adds: "Frankly anyone's number for next year, including ours, is a pure guess. No one in the world has a model. If they say they do they're lying. The numbers are pure guesswork, there's no science to them, and no methodology behind them. Everyday a new crook comes out of the woodwork who's lost tens of billions of dollars. It's better to say: 'We don't know', than to produce a figure, and then try and substantiate it on logical grounds."
This week
Good old British common sense to the rescue.
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