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IC Insights’ full-year 2021 IC market forecast is being raised from a 19 percent increase to 24 percent. Even if excluding memory, the total IC market is expected to be up by 21 percent this year.
Continued per-bit pricing strength in the DRAM and NAND flash markets as well as a better than expected outlook for many of the logic and analog IC product categories are the driving forces behind the adjustment.
After dropping 8 percent in 2019, the analog IC market registered a small 3 percent increase in 2020. For 2021, the analog market is expected to surge and display 25 percent growth with a 20 percent jump in unit shipments. As a result of the supply constraints in the analog IC market, a rare rise of 4 percent in the analog ASP is forecast for this year (the last time there was an increase in analog IC ASP was 17 years ago in 2004). Moreover, in 2004, the analog IC ASP was $0.60 as compared to only $0.32 in 2020, a 16-year CAGR of -4 percent.
Every major general-purpose analog and application-specific analog market segment tracked by IC Insights is expected to post a double-digit increase in 2021. The automotive application specific analog segment is forecast to lead the way in analog market growth this year with a 31 percent increase driven almost entirely by a 30 percent increase unit volume shipments.
The total logic IC market is forecast to increase by 24 percent in 2021. Logic markets that are expected to register >30 percent in growth this year include the Industrial (47 percent), Automotive (39 percent), and Consumer (38 percent) application-specific logic segments and the Display Driver category (31 percent). The ASP for logic ICs is forecast to drop 5 percent this year but be offset by a massive 30 percent increase in logic unit shipments.
With the price per bit of DRAM rising 28 percent from 39 cents per Gb in 4Q20 to 50 cents per Gb in 2Q21, IC Insights raised its full year 2021 forecast for the DRAM market to 41 percent. Moreover, it is expected that the price per bit of DRAM will continue to rise in the second half of this year as supply remains tight.
The forecast for the NAND flash market is for 22 percent growth. The price per bit of NAND declined 26 percent from 1Q20 to 1Q21, but pricing stabilized in 2Q21 and is expected to increase over the remaining two quarters of this year. For all of 2021, the total memory market is forecast to be up by 32 percent.
As mentioned earlier, the worldwide IC market is now expected to display an increase of 24 percent this year, driven by a 21 percent jump in unit shipments and a 2 percent increase in ASP. A growth rate of 24 percent would be the third largest increase in the global IC market over the past 16 years, being surpassed only by the 33 percent surge displayed in 2010 and the 25 percent increase registered in 2017.
For more information contact Bill McClean, President at IC Insights. Phone: +1-480-348-1133 email: bill@icinsights.com
