LONDON - XJTAG CEO Simon Payne has called for support of the UK’s electronics exhibition, National Electronics Week, which is scheduled to for June 17-19 at London’s Earls Court.

Payne said that he believes strongly that the UK electronics industry should be doing more to promote itself on the global stage, and points out that this event is just the opportunity to do this. “The UK electronics industry is the fifth largest in the world, yet we lack a single international event in the UK at which to showcase our considerable talents. Here is an opportunity for the leading UK-based companies and universities to highlight their world-class innovative talents in research and development at a UK event,” said Payne.

Payne has hopes that the exhibition will have an international dimension, and that the event will both attract visitors from overseas, and showcase UK technology.

“We urge everyone in the UK electronics sector, from the leading lights to the undiscovered gems, not to miss the opportunity to exhibit their products and show their support for this industry,” said Payne.

Along with XJTAG, companies such as National Instruments, Pace Europe, Panasonic, Fuji and Samsung have already signed up to for the event.

EL SEGUNDO, CA — Surprising fourth-quarter weakness in the memory chip market took the wind out of the sails of the global semiconductor market, causing 2007 growth to fall short of expectations, according to iSuppli Corp.

Global semiconductor market revenue grew 3.3% in 2007, iSuppli says, lower than the firm's 4.1% estimate in November.

For the quarter, semi revenues fell 0.5%, but were up 2.4% excluding memory.

Worldwide DRAM revenue fell 19.1% sequentially in the fourth quarter, below the November estimate of a 4.7% drop. NAND flash revenue declined 3.9%. Overall, memory chip revenue fell 11% sequentially.

“This was a complete role reversal for memory semiconductors compared to 2006,” said Dale Ford, senior vice president, market intelligence, for iSuppli. “During the second half of 2006, memory IC revenues helped to prop up the growth of the overall semiconductor industry. In 2007, the poor results for memory chips restrained overall market growth.”

Application-specific standard products and ASICs enjoyed the strongest performance of all semiconductor segments in 2007 with growth of 12.9%. Sony and Toshiba were the key drivers of growth in this segment due to sales of semiconductors for the PS3 game console. Optical semiconductors were up 7.4%, and discretes grew 4.2%. Overall, microprocessor revenue grew 2.1%.