TAIPEI, Taiwan -- At foundry chip supplier United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) net sales for April 2004 were NT$9,209 million (about US$277 million), up 2.2 percent compared on March 2004 and up 25.8 percent over April 2003 sales, the company said Friday (May 7).

However, although the year-on-year growth was strong it had declined from 27.6 percent in February 2004 numbers.

UMC's sales for the first third of 2004, which totalled NT$34.5 billion (about US$1.04 billion), were up 36.9 percent compared to the first third of 2003. This also represented a softening of the growth rate from the very high percentages seen in the first couple of months of 2004.

For the first two months of the year UMC sales had been 50.5 percent higher than in 2003.