Sales totalled $3.401 billion in January, a slight rise of 0.9 percent from December 2017.

But ESIA said that Europe was the only region showing growth on a month by month basis.

Worldwide, sals of semiconductors amounted to $37.594 billion in the month.

By sector, analogue semiconductor devices MOS microcontrollers and application specific chips drove most of the sales.

ESIA derives its figures from the WSTS, a worldwide organisation that measures semiconductor statistics and there are fluctuations in the figures because of variations in the Euro versus the Dollar.