Silicon Motion Technology has announced its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2012. For the first quarter of 2012, net sales decreased 4.7% quarter-over-quarter to US$64.0 million from US$67.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. Net income (non-GAAP) decreased in the first quarter to US$14.0 million or US$0.41 per diluted ADS from a net income of US$16.1 million or US$0.47 per diluted ADS in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Net income (GAAP) for the first quarter increased quarter-over-quarter to US$13.0 million or US$0.39 per diluted ADS from a net income of US$12.2 million or US$0.37 per diluted ADS in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Silicon Motion's president and CEO, Wallace Kou, said, "I am pleased to deliver our first quarter revenue at the high-end of our quarterly guidance. Our first quarter revenue of US$64.0 million is 48% higher than the same period a year ago and is the highest first quarter revenue in the company's history. This quarter, our eMMC controllers for a major NAND flash partner went into production and four new Samsung LTE smartphones using our LTE transceivers started selling to end consumers, sales from which helped propel a 20% sequential increase in our New Growth Products.
"Our mobile storage business and the OEM part of this business declined as seasonally expected. However, our module maker business was stronger than expected primarily because of increased availability of low-cost NAND flash for module makers to build bundled cards for Chinese OEMs targeting the growing low-cost smartphone market. Separately, we are excited to announce that our eMMC controllers for a NAND flash partner has entered mass production. These eMMC modules, including MCPs, using our controllers are now shipping in volume to several leading Asian handset OEMs for their smartphones, including some highly anticipated, high-end global flagship models. We have a number of new eMMC design wins for production in the second quarter and the second half of this year and now have design wins with seven smartphone OEMs. As a result, we believe that our eMMC is on track to deliver significant growth.
"Our mobile communications business grew in the first quarter with increasing LTE transceiver sales. During the quarter, Sprint, Metro PCs, and US Cellular began sales of four new Samsung LTE smartphones using our LTE transceivers: the Galaxy Attain 4G, Galaxy S Aviator, Galaxy Tab 10.1, and Galaxy Nexus. We are excited about the outlook for our LTE business with Samsung and are pleased to announce that we now have a total of 11 design wins for 2012."
Net sales in the first quarter were US$64.0 million, a decrease of 4.7% compared with the previous quarter. For the quarter, mobile storage products accounted for 72% of net sales, mobile communications 23% of net sales, multimedia SoCs 4% of net sales and other products accounted for 1% of net sales.
Net sales of mobile storage products, which primarily include flash memory cards, USB flash drives, SSD and embedded flash controllers, decreased 2% sequentially in the first quarter to US$45.9 million.
Net sales of mobile communication products, which primarily include handset transceivers and mobile TV IC solutions, increased 3% from the fourth quarter of 2011 to US$15.0 million this quarter.
Net sales of multimedia SoC products, which are primarily embedded graphics processors, decreased 10% from the fourth quarter of 2011 to US$2.7 million in the first quarter.
Gross margin (non-GAAP) decreased to 49.5% in the first quarter from 49.8% in the fourth quarter of 2011. GAAP gross margin decreased to 49.4% in the first quarter from 49.7% in the fourth quarter of 2011.