PARIS AND MILAN—Global semiconductor sales rose 0.7 percent in November from the previous month as consumers bought liquid-crystal display television sets and digital music players, an industry group said.

Total sales rose $200 million to $23.1 billion, the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said in a statement distributed by Business Wire. Sales increased 2.3 percent from a year earlier, the San Jose, California-based group said. Year-to-date sales of $231 billion are 2.8 percent ahead of the $225 billion in sales for the same period in 2006.

PROCESSORS on an Intel 45nm Hafnium-based High-k Metal Gate “Penryn” Wafer are photographed with a penny in this images released to the media. Using an entirely new transistor formula, the processors incorporate 420 million transistors for each dual-core chip, and 840 million for each quad-core chip. --BLOOMBERG

Unit sales of microprocessors, the central component of PCs, rose 2.6 percent in November from the previous month on strong demand for computers. Revenue growth in the segment beat shipments with a 5.8-percent gain, helped by a 3.2-percent increase in microprocessors’ prices.

“Rising energy prices and concerns about subprime-lending issues do not appear to have had a significant impact on consumer spending on electronic products during the holiday buying season,'' association president George Scalise said in the release.

Scalise said “it will take very strong sales in December to meet our forecast of 3.8-percent” growth in chip sales for 2007. The SIA raised its estimate for global semiconductor sales on November 14 from 1.8 percent, citing higher consumer demand for electronic products.

Mobile-phone shipments will advance by more than 20 percent for a fifth year in 2007, and unit sales of computers will gain more than 10 percent, the association said.

Unit sales of dynamic random-access memory chips jumped 25 percent in the three months to mid-December, while average selling prices declined 20 percent in the same period.

“While unit demand has been very robust, average selling prices have declined in a number of key product segments,” Scalise said. “Pricing pressure in the memory sector continues to impact industry sales.” (Bloomberg)

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PARIS AND MILAN—Global semiconductor sales rose 0.7 percent in November from the previous month as consumers bought liquid-crystal display television sets and digital music players, an industry group said.

SAN FRANCISCO—An index of Silicon Valley stocks fell late Wednesday, led by International Business Machines Corp., Apple Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. (E-Arts).

MONTREAL AND JERUSALEM—International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), the world’s biggest computer-services company, bought Israeli data-storage provider XIV to meet growing demand for digital archiving.