Asia-Pacific’s grip as the dominant market for IC sales is forecast to strengthen in 2016 with the region expected to account for 61.0% of the $282.0 billion IC market this year, based on analysis published in IC Insights’ mid-year Update to the 2016 IC Market Drivers report.  The forecast calls for another small gain in total IC marketshare in 2016 after Asia-Pacific held 57.7% share in 2013, 58.4% in 2014, and 60.5% in 2015. The Asia-Pacific region is particularly dominant with regard to IC marketshare in the communications and computer categories, and to a lesser extent in the consumer and industrial categories (Figure 1).  In 2016, IC Insights expects the Asia-Pacific region to surpass Europe and become the largest region for automotive ICs for the first time, as China continues to account for a large and growing portion of new car shipments.  That will leave only the Government/Military end use segment where Asia-Pacific does not have top IC marketshare—a condition that is forecast to hold through 2019.

Figure 1

IC Insights’ Update to the IC Market Drivers 2016 report forecasts total IC usage by system type through the year 2019. Highlights from the forecast include the following items.

– The Asia-Pacific region is forecast to increase its share of the IC market to 62.3% in 2019, from 61.0% forecast for 2016. Over the same time, North American is also forecast to increase marketshare to 23.8%. Conversely, Europe and Japan are expected to lose IC marketshare through 2019. Japan’s IC marketshare is forecast to slip to 5.5% and Europe is forecast to slide to 8.3% in 2019.

– The two fastest growing end-use markets for ICs through 2019 are forecast to be the automotive and industrial/medical segments, having 2015-2019 CAGRs of 8.0% and 7.1%, respectively.  Though having the greatest CAGR through 2019, the automotive IC market is not expected to account for more than 8.0% of total IC sales any time through the forecast period.

– After slumping to only $10.6 billion in 2009, the automotive IC market is forecast to reach nearly 3x that amount ($28.0 billion) in 2019.

– The two largest end-use markets (computer and communications) are forecast to account for 73.7% of the total IC market in 2019, almost the same as the 73.9% share they are forecast to hold in 2016.

– In 2016, analog ICs are forecast to account for the greatest share of IC sales within the automotive (45%) and industrial (50%) segments; logic devices are expected to account for the greatest share of IC sales in communications (41%), consumer (41%), and government/military (32%) applications, and microprocessors are forecast to account for the greatest share (42%) of IC sales in the computer segment.