Chip Sector's Crisis Bottoming Out: Motley Fool

A prominent semiconductor sector analyst sees a bottom nearing in the PC, smartphone and consumer electronic markets.

Photo Insert: Shares of Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Qualcomm all soared recently.

Shares of Microsoft, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Qualcomm all soared recently. As of 3:33 p.m. ET, they were up 4%, 7.2%, and 3.8%, respectively, Billy Duberstein reported for Motley Fool.

The broader market indexes were in positive territory for the day, too, but these three stocks more likely rose due to a prominent semiconductor sector analyst calling a "bottom" in consumer electronics, specifically PCs and smartphones.

In addition, Microsoft showed off some upcoming integrations between ChatGPT and its Office software suite.

On Thursday, Susquehanna analyst Christopher Rolland essentially called the bottom in the consumer electronics sector, upgrading Qualcomm and AMD's rival Intel. "We believe the acute portion of the semiconductor downcycle for the handset, PC and consumer end markets has passed," he said in a research note to clients.

Of course, if sales of PCs and smartphones really are going to get back to growing soon, that would also be a big plus for AMD, which has taken lots of market share from Intel in the PC chip market over the past of couple years.

And of course, it would also help Microsoft, which licenses its Windows operating system to all non-Apple PC vendors and also sells its own Surface line of devices.

The call dovetails nicely with Wednesday's Digitimes report that said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) is seeing a recovery in its fab utilization rates after a multi-quarter downturn.

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