SurplusGLOBAL, Inc. participated in Semicon West 2013. SurplusGLOBAL CEO, Bruce Kim forecasted the increase in demand in the Asia Secondary Equipment Market.
Bruce Kim, CEO of SurplusGLOBAL, has participated in Semicon West for the past 7 years and stated, “We are more optimistic about the growth in the Asian Secondary Semiconductor Equipment Market in the years to come.”
Secondary semiconductor equipment addresses both environmental and cost concerns within the industry. The secondary equipment market size has experienced continuous growth over the past three years. In 2012 the market size was estimated to be around 3 billion US dollars, with 200mm wafer capturing 90% of this market. In 2013, demand of 300mm wafer equipment is expected to capture an increased share of the demand.
With the growth in demand, distribution and services are becoming more critical every year. The number of Fab facilities in the United States and Europe continues to experience decline, while in Asia there has been continued investment in the China, Taiwan and South Korean markets. The Asian market accounts for approximately 80% of the semiconductor equipment market. The Asian secondary equipment market has been experiencing continued growth and global, financially stable traders such as SurplusGLOBAL are well positioned to lead the supply of this equipment.
The market has been very slow for last two years in Asia since the second half of 2011. Most of the Asian players enjoyed the market recovery in Year 2010 and the 1st half of 2011. After then, utilization rates at Foundries plummeted to levels, LED fabs suffered from slow demands and price pressures. The sales revenues of Asian dealers and refubishers have declined up to 70 percent. These days we can see several ongoing expansion plans mainly from Taiwan and China Foundries as well as a few new Fab plans in China. LED Fabs are resuming the purchase of tools. Analog and Power device makers are adding bottleneck tools. The demands of Fab tools from packaging companies are increasing.
Bruce Kim commented “The major market drives are Foundries who want to expand their capacity or build new Fabs mainly in Taiwan and China. There are increasing demands of secondary equipment in mature technology including not only 8 inch silicon wafer, but also LED, packaging and MEMS."
To date, this demand has been driven by both 200mm FAB front and backend tools. We project starting growth of 300mm FABs in Asia. Powerchip sold hundreds of 300MM tools in the 1st Half to many Asian Fabs. GLOBALFoundries acquired a thousand of Fab tools from Promos and sold many of them to China new fab recently. Bruce Kim mentioned, “300mm Fabs have difficulty in purchasing secondary equipment because of insufficient support from equipment suppliers, so SurplusGLOBAL expects it will take considerable time for the 300mm secondary equipment market to take off.”
SurplusGLOBAL locates, sells and stocks thousands of systems annually and has established an extensive global network of end users, refurbishers and brokers. SurplusGLOBAL specializes in semiconductor manufacturing equipment acquired from the leading chip manufacturers in the United States, Europe and Asia covering Fab, ATE and PCB/SMT capital equipment segments.