Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Your first response is from the line of Bill Ong.
Bill Ong - Merriman Curhan Ford
Congratulations on nice quarter. As you get into a more normalized growth in calendar 2010, can you talk about seasonality as you get into the next four quarters? Do you expect March to be seasonal or better than seasonal based on visibility?
Oleg Khaykin
I'm not sure I can comment on all four quarters visibility going forward, but I can at least give you some color in the near term. Looking at this quarter, as we've stated, we're seeing continued growth this quarter and clearly we're waiting with anticipation after the Thanksgiving holiday to see how much the demand that's currently being projected by our customers hold up.
That said, we do expect the March quarter to be somewhat stronger than seasonal. I guess there are couple of elements that are driving it. One is kind of more systemic, industry-wide and the other one is specific to IR. Part of our business at IR is servicing appliances manufacturers, like air conditioners. The March quarter is seasonally the strongest quarter for that segment during the year, as most of the procurement in Asia is done around that time to build the products for the summer.
In terms of the broader market, given that we're seeing significant lead time extensions and increased orders from customers trying to rebuild their inventories, and meet their customers' demand, I believe that the seasonal weakness typical of March quarter, maybe offset by some of these customers taking an opportunity to further rebalance their inventories. That is all, obviously, very speculative at this time and remains to be seen what happens during the Christmas sales.
Bill Ong - Merriman Curhan Ford
Second question is, since joining the firm along with your new executive team, can you talk about which product areas have you redirected your R&D and design win efforts to focus on, which type of end market, and where do you think these types of benefit will play out in 2010 and beyond? What type of growth rates can we expect?
Oleg Khaykin
Well, I'm not going to comment on growth rates beyond what we have projected, but in terms of redirecting R&D, we have reentered the discrete marketplace and we have been successfully rebuilding that franchise for IR. One of the big areas we've done in terms of sharpening the focus is really focusing our existing business units and technologies in our development to win Tier 1 customers rather than going after a broader market.
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