Gartner yesterday (June 3rd) is now projecting that the industry will generate $290 billion (£200 billion) this year in income, which represents a 27.1 per cent increase compared with 2009's figure of $228 billion.
The market research company had originally predicted a 19.9 per cent jump in sales revenue for 2010.
Bryan Lewis, Gartner's research vice-president, said: "The improvement is a combination of the economic recovery, an improvement in hardware spending and semiconductor sales exceeding the pace of systems sales."
He added that manufacturing constraints had also led to an increase in semiconductor prices in recent times.
Earlier this year, Taiwanese firm Young Fast Optoelectronics attributed the increase in shipments of its capacitive touch screen LCD panels to the growing popularity of smartphones such as Apple's iPhone and BlackBerry.
