SAN FRANCISCO -- Orders for semiconductor production and testing equipment from North American manufacturers dropped in April, indicating that a long-awaited recovery has still not arrived, a trade group said on Thursday.

The three-month average of worldwide orders was $737 million, 5 percent below March's revised orders of $777 million and 26 percent below the $996 million posted a year earlier, according to Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International, or SEMI.

Equipment billings, a measure of the value of equipment accepted by customers and booked as revenue, was $854 million in April, slightly below March's revised level of $857 million and 5 percent above the $815 million a year earlier.

"Despite hopeful indications in last month's figures, orders for new semiconductor manufacturing equipment remain at relatively low levels," said Stanley Myers, president and chief executive of SEMI.

"The April data reflects continuing uncertainty in the broader markets in regards to recovery in consumer and commercial spending," he said.

Chip equipment makers and their customers have been in an extended market downturn as a result of a general economic slump and corporate spending cutbacks.

Applied Materials Inc. AMAT.O , the world's biggest maker of chip production tools, on Tuesday posted a quarterly loss and said it expected orders to be flat this quarter and spending on wafer fabrication equipment to be flat with last year.

Intel Corp. INTC.O , the largest maker of chips, has said it plans to cut its capital spending this year by as much as a quarter, to a range of $3.5 billion to $3.9 billion.

Last year, worldwide chip equipment sales fell about 32 percent from 2001 as chip makers cut back on plans to expand and upgrade factories, according to SEMI statistics.

The statistics indicate a ratio of orders to billings, known as the book-to-bill ratio, of 0.86, which means that $86 worth of new orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month, the San Jose, California-based trade group said.

North American chip equipment manufacturers represent more than half the total world market.

While the monthly book-to-bill numbers are considered to be a poor barometer of chip equipment sales they can serve as a guide to the severity of a downturn.

Data released on Thursday from the U.S. Federal Reserve Board showed that fab utilization at semiconductor and related electronic component plants in the United States was 65.4 percent in April, compared to 65 percent in March.