FSI International (FSII) is now a company that almost no one follows. But the latest results from the tiny Minneapolis-based semiconductor equipment firm offer a sobering snapshot of conditions in the industry.

For its fiscal second quarter ended February 28, FSI posted revenue of $8.6 million, which is down 60 percent–60 percent!–from the $21.4 million reported in the year-earlier quarter. That brings total first-half revenues to $20.9 million, down 52 percent from $43.9 million a year ago. For the quarter, the company lost $9.4 million, or 30 cents a share, including $2.8 million in severance costs and a $500,000 increase in its reserve for inventory obsolescence.

In a statement, CEO Don Mitchell gives the explanation you’d expect: “The global economic downturn is continuing to adversely impact credit availability, consumer confidence and technology spending,” which in turn has caused “low factory utilization levels” at most semiconductor manufacturing companies, resulting in reduced or delayed capital spending.

And despite some optimism on the Street, Mitchell does not see any early recovery. “Even though it is reported that several device producers have recently started to experience improved utilization levels, we anticipate that this situation will persist until at least early calendar 2010,” he says.

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Bernstein Research analyst Jeffrey Lindsay this morning cut his ratings on both Amazon.com (AMZN) and eBay (EBAY) to Market Perform from Outperform, noting that the stocks have rallied off their November lows toward his target prices of $50 for Amazon and $16 for eBay. Given the current macro environment, he writes, there is little upside to current 2009 estimates, with increased risk of reduced guidance or under-performance.

For Amazon, he has three major concerns:

Reduced discretionary spending as unemployment and home foreclosures further erode U.S. consumer confidence. He notes that “the vast majority of goods sold by Amazon are discretionary purchases.” He says consumers have “pulled out all of the stops for the holiday season”–have they?–he expects “much more cautious and restrained spending as redundancies and home foreclosures continue as expected through 2009.”

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You will not be shocked to learn that online holiday spending is not off to a good start.

ComScore today reports that for the first 23 days of November, e-commerce spending (excluding travel, auctions and large corporate purchases) was down four percent from the same period last year. ComScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni said that “with consumer confidence low and disposable income tight, the first weeks of November have been very disappointing.”

ComScore’s forecast is that overall online spending this year will be flat versus a year ago. That compares with a 19 percent rise in spending online last year, and a nine percent rise in e-commerce for the year through October.

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Corning (GLW) plans to cut the production capacity of its wholly owned glass business by 30-40 percent in response to a slowdown in the LCD television market, CFO Jim Flaws said this morning in an interview with Tech Trader Daily on the company’s disappointing fourth-quarter outlook.

Flaws noted that the company has been operating with a “conundrum in the LCD business” for most of the year: While there have been constant fears about the economy, LCD demand through most of the summer remained strong. But he notes that after Labor Day, weekly data have shown a decline in LCD TV sales at retail. Flaws says the combination of rising unemployment, low consumer confidence and weak financial markets has lead people to “retreat” on LCD television spending. He says unit growth is still positive, but nowhere near the 37 percent level seen in the first eight months of the year.

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Nokia (NOK) this morning warned that it now expects its mobile device market share in the third quarter to be down from the second quarter. The company had previously said it expected its share of the market to be sequentially flat.

Nokia said it continues to target an increase in share for the full year.

The company also said it expects the overall mobile device market this year to be “impacted by the weaker consumer confidence in multiple markets,” although it still expects device volume to grow 10 percent or more from 1.14 billion units last year. Nokia said it still expects industry units to be up sequentially in Q3, but lower than previously expected.

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