Troubled Tower Semiconductor says market over capacity and delays in delivering new products caused its first quarter revenues to drop 38.2% from $23.2m in the first quarter 1998 to $14.3m this year. Dr Yoav Nissan-Choen, of the Migdal Haemek, Israel-based memory module and CMOS image sensor maker, warned that there is no immediate prospect of improvement. We do not expect a significant improvement in our sales until later this year, when we expect to ramp up volume production of new products for several new customers, he said. The company is pinning its hopes for the future on its microFlash process, a tiny flash array suitable for embedding in system-on-a-chip devices. The firm is looking to deliver microFlash modules in the second half of this year.
