Murky Q3

Traditionally the strongest quarter of the year, Q3 is proving to be a tricky quarter for the industry to forecast with some wider than usual spreads on guidance.
Seeking Alpha points out that Intel is guiding 2-10% growth; Qualcomm -4 to +5%; TI -4 to +4%; ST -5 to +5.5%; Broadcom 1 to 9%; Altera 2 to 6%.
There are some notable exceptions who see a stellar Q3: Cirrus Logic is guiding 72 to 92% growth for the quarter which might say something about Apple's plans for a 7 inch tablet and/or iPhone 5. Apple is Cirrus' largest customer.
Then there's SanDisk guiding 11 to 21% suggesting that SSDs could be in big demand. "Our SSD SKUs continue to grow nicely," it was said at the earnings call, "and we are moving the company higher up the value chain with our SSD software solutions."
Skyworks is guiding 7 to 8% growth after rising 6.6% in Q2 on Q1, MediaTek is guiding 13-18% growth and Triquint is another one predicting a great quarter guiding 10 to 15% growth.
There are some big spreads: ST at -5 to +5.5%; Freescale at -7 to +2%; PMC-Sierra at -6 to 0%; Maxim at 0 to +5% - all suggesting that the difficulties of knowing what you're doing in the semiconductor industry have not got any easier.