China's semiconductor industry posted an impressive growth last year, with its industrial structure continuing to improve.

According to a semiconductor summit held recently in Shanghai, last year China produced approximately 30 billion integrated circuit (IC) chips, a year-on-year increase of 36.7 percent. The sector recorded a sales volume of 75 billion yuan (9.2 billion U.S. dollars), up 37.5 percent over the previous year.

Industry insiders predicted that the semiconductor industry would maintain the sound development momentum this year, hopefully producing 42 billion IC chips and achieving a sales volume of 102 billion yuan (12.6 billion U.S. dollars).

Since the beginning of last year, the sector has adjusted and improved its industrial structure, with the IC packaging business claiming a smaller share and IC design and IC wafer production expanding rapidly.

In 2005, the IC packaging business garnered 34 billion yuan (4.2 billion U.S. dollars) in earnings, up 20.3 percent over the previous year. Meanwhile, the earnings of the IC design and IC wafer production reached 13.1 billion yuan (1.6 billion U.S. dollars) and 28 billion yuan (3.5 billion U.S. dollars) respectively, up 60.8 percent and 54.5 percent year on year.

Source: Xinhua