SiliconBeat

Mattson Technology, the Fremont maker of chip-making equipment that said last month it was eliminating about 80 jobs, or 14 percent of its work force citing “a protracted downturn” in the industry, released actual results for its third quarter Wednesday, and they weren’t pretty.

Sales fell 28 percent from the previous quarter to $30 million, and that was down 49 percent from the third quarter of 2007. The company’s gross margin plunged by 18.6 percentage points from the quarter before to 25.5 percent.

Third quarter results included $1.9 million in restructuring charges related to the “cost alignment plan” announced in September, compared to $0.7 million for the second quarter.

“The third quarter was marked by a significant and unprecedented drop in IC capital spending, resulting from severely deteriorating macroeconomic conditions,” said CEO David Dutton in a statement. “During the quarter, our customers responded to the worsening financial environment by reviewing their respective expansion plans and delaying those that they did not deem absolutely critical at this point in time.”

Also releasing results Wednesday was Milpitas chip-maker Intersil, whose chief executive, Dave Bell, said in a statement “We have seen a significant decline in orders entering the fourth quarter. The decrease in demand is broad and spread across most of our product families and end markets.  Demand for our computing and consumer products is particularly weak as global demand for these products has dropped quickly.”