The virus is having a spotty effect on chip sales. It’s having a bad effect on some industry areas like smartphone chips but having a positive effect on chips for PCs and datacentres.

TSMC’s calendar Q1 revenues of $10.4 billion were up 42% y-o-y compared to Q1 2019 revenues of $7.3 billion.

March revenues of $3.76 billion were up on 21% on February’s revenues of $3.09 billion.

Although TSMC’s smartphone chip business was down, the company reported a surge of demand for its CoWoS packaged chips for laptops, and surging sales of its UV-C- LEDs which are used to sterilise air, water and surfaces.

Intel saw demand pick up in Q1 driven by orders for PCs wanted by people working from home.

“It’s somewhat logical and intuitive,” Intel CEO Bob Swan told Bloomberg, “where our lives are disrupted and we need to do more and more things from our home, we need to ensure we have the technology at our disposal so things can go on as normal as possible. What that has meant is demand for more and more devices, including PCs, for parents to continue to conduct their work and for kids to continue their education.”

Samsung expects a 5% Q1 revenue increase for its semiconductor unit for a profit of $5.2 billion compared to $5.1 billion in Q1 2019. Samsung says that increased demand from datacentres for server capacity to keep up with the rising requirement from home workers, has driven its semiconductor sales.

Qualcomm is the only company making positive forecasts about the smartphone market forecasting calendar Q1 sales of with revenues of $4.9 billion to $5.7 billion compared to $5.1 billion in calendar Q4 on the back of reviving mobile demand in China.