Competition for wafer fab capacity is one reason the automotive industry is scrambling for an adequate supply of semiconductors in 2021. IC Insights this week reported the top 5 wafer capacity leaders in the market account for 54 percent of all global capacity. Each of the top-five wafer capacity leaders had capacity of at least…
Fabless/system IC company sales are forecast to more than double from 2010 to 2020 ($63.5 billion to $130.0 billion) whereas the total IDM IC sales are expected to be up only 30% over this same time period, from $204.3 billion in 2010 to $265.7 billion in 2020, IC Insights reports. There is a relatively close…
The IC market has demonstrated “remarkable resilience” in the face of a pandemic-driven global economic downturn, reports IC Insights, with 21 of 33 IC product categories experiencing positive growth. Coming as no surprise, each of the top-five IC product categories in terms of sales all have ties to computing or communication applications. With estimated sales…
The semiconductor industry has been one of the most resilient markets during this coronavirus-plagued year. Seven top-15 semiconductor suppliers are forecast to show ≥22% growth in 2020 with Nvidia expected to post a huge 50% increase, reports IC Insights. Leading semiconductor supplier Intel, with only 4% growth, managed to maintain its No. 1 ranking. The…
About eight months after the Covid-19 virus pandemic accelerated around the world—causing lockdowns in many countries and driving the global economy into a deep recession—sales of optoelectronics, sensors and actuators, and discrete semiconductors have stabilized. In some cases, revenues have begun showing signs of a slight recovery in the second half of 2020, which is…
A memory price jump that typically coincides with the introduction of new smartphone models in 3Q and 4Q is not expected due to disrupted buying patterns and cautious discretionary spending. IC Insights’ October Update to The McClean Report showed the monthly average selling price (ASP) of DRAM started on a steep downward trend in the…
Driven by growing demand for application processors and other telecomm device sales into 5G smartphones, the pure play foundry market is on pace to expand by a strong 19% this year, after declining 1% in 2019. IC Insights forecasts 200 million 5G smartphone handsets will be shipped in 2020 (although some forecasts expect 250 million…
After nearly two months of negotiations and press reports that a blockbuster deal was in the works, Nvidia this week announced a $40 billion agreement to buy ARM—the leading supplier of processor intellectual property (IP)—from financially struggling SoftBank in Japan. If approved, the deal would be the largest semiconductor acquisition in history, provided the additional…
The DRAM market is poised for a modest recovery in 2020, but suppliers are being very cautious, strategic, and thorough in their analysis of market conditions before they consider any further upgrades or decide to move ahead with any new DRAM wafer fab plans. Figure 1 shows DRAM capex budgets for the three major suppliers.…
5G remains the electronics industry’s best hope to kickstart a global economy that’s been decimated by Covid-19. Although network rollout is far from uniform across the globe, supply analysts are beginning to form a picture of what the 5G supply chain will look like. As of March, 5G was live in 24 markets globally, according…