Sales for the world''s two largest foundries continued to rise on a monthly sequential basis in June, but were still down considerably year over year.

Sales for the first six months of the calendar year were also down for both No. 1 foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and No. 2 foundry United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC). Both Taiwanese foundry giants reported June sales today.

TSMC said that its June sales were $630.5 million (20.1 billion new Taiwanese dollars), down 10.7 percent from June 2004, but above May 2005''s figure of $623.6 million (19.5 billion NT), a sequential improvement of 3.1 percent. For the first six months of 2005, TSMC posted revenue of $3.6 billion (114.2 billion NT), down 6.7 percent from revenue in the first half of 2004.

Lora Ho, TSMC VP and CFO, characterized the sequential growth in a statement as "continued demand recovery."

Rival UMC, meanwhile, posted June revenue of $207 million (6.6 billion NT), down 35.9 percent year over year, but a sequential monthly increase of approximately 2.2 percent. In the first half of 2005 UMC posted sales of $1.24 billion (39.7 billion NT), down 27.1 percent compared with the same period a year ago.

Both UMC and TSMC saw similar sequential gains and year-over-year drops in revenue for the month of May as well.