April 13, 2007 – Both of Taiwan’s top two foundries saw sales rise slightly in 1Q vs. the previous quarter, but revenues are still down from a year ago.

TSMC says sales (unconsolidated) for March were about $661.0 million, up 6.5% from February but down -19.1% from March 2006. That indicates a nice rebound, because sales in 1Q07 actually were down significantly both quarter-on-quarter (-14.3%) and year-on-year (-18.0%) to about $1.91 billion.

UMC similarly saw a slight uptick in March monthly sales (+4.3%) of $227.9 million, which were about 10% behind the pace from a year ago. But that’s also better than the company’s reported 1Q07 declines of 11.8% Q-Q and -5.6% Y-Y, coming in at $695.1 million.