Intense competition between microprocessor vendors led to a 6.1 percent decline in sales revenue between March and April, despite decent growth in the rest of the semiconductor market.The slump dragged the worldwide semiconductor market down from March revenues of US$19.7 billion to April revenue of $19.6 billion, according to a study the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) released Thursday.The revenue drop could have come because Intel and Advanced Micro Devices have been cutting prices on current chips as they roll out products.Still, the study offered hope for future growth. The market-wide April revenue figure marks an 8.1 percent increase over the same month last year. And monthly PC sales climbed 13 percent to 15 percent compared to April 2005. That jibes with a 10.2 percent increase in PC shipments by market-leader Dell, comparing the first quarter of 2005 with the first quarter of 2006. Second-place vendor Hewlett-Packard grew at 22.3 percent over the same period, according to Gartner.The overall market for semiconductors slumped because microprocessors are its largest single sector, at 14 percent, according to SIA President George Scalise. Working against that trend, strong sales of consumer electronics drove the rest of the market to strong year-over-year increases.Demand for wireless handsets sustained the market for analog electronics, digital signal processors, NOR flash and optoelectronic devices.Meanwhile, the popularity of digital music players drove NAND flash to a 25 percent increase, comparing April 2005 to April 2006. Digital music player sales grew at 50 percent year over year.-Ben Ames, IDG News ServiceCheck out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content brandpost Sponsored by Rimini Street Dear Oracle Cloud…I need my own space Access results from a recent Rimini Street survey about why enterprises are rethinking their Oracle relationship and cloud strategy. By Tanya O'Hara Nov 28, 2023 5 mins Cloud Computing brandpost Sponsored by Rimini Street How to evolve IT systems into innovation engines Today’s IT leaders are more than eager to modernize with best-fit cloud solutions that drive innovation and rapid business impact, but they need to do so with ROI-based solutions. By Tanya O'Hara Nov 28, 2023 4 mins IT Leadership brandpost Sponsored by Palo Alto Networks x Accenture Making sense of zero trust - why a managed SASE solution is the ideal option for enterprises Security leaders are turning to SASE as their preferred network security solution amid a new era of cloud-powered businesses working from anywhere. By CIO Contributor Nov 28, 2023 4 mins Network Security feature 8 tips for unleashing the power of unstructured data For most organizations, data in the form of text, video, audio, and other formats is plentiful but remains untapped. Here’s how to unlock business value from this overlooked data trove. By Bob Violino Nov 28, 2023 10 mins Data Mining Data Science Data Management Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe