Worldwide Highlights
09/01/1997
Worldwide highlights
June equipment and chip book-to-bills healthy. The North American book-to-bill ratio for semiconductor equipment remained flat at a healthy 1.09 in June, according to SEMI. Market indicators seem to provide continued evidence of stable health for both the equipment and chip sectors. SEMI`s figures showed a rising trend for the fourth straight month, with total equipment order input increasing in June to $1.46 billion, and three-month average bookings rising 2.5% above May 1997 levels.
 |
LCD tool sales to rise. This year`s world market for LCD manufacturing equipment is expected to kick up by 62% over 1996 levels, but subsequent years will see a substantial decline, according to a new survey by Electronic Journal Inc., Tokyo. A major building initiative and doubling of capital spending by Japanese display producers is the main driver behind the forecast (see table), which predicts a world market size of 241.4 billion yen (about $2.14 billion). However, subsequent years are seen slipping - a 26% drop to 179.1 billion yen is seen in 1998, with a 15% dip to 152.6 billion yen forecast for 1999. Growth will finally return in 2000, says the study, but sales are seen rising just 3.5% to 157.9 billion yen.
Fab utilization up in 1Q. Production levels at fabs worldwide reached 87.6% of total capacity during the 1Q of this year, up 1.5 points from the 86.1% reported for the last six months of 1996, according to the latest factory output figures released by the Semiconductor International Capacity Statistics (SICAS) group. The industry averaged 1,298,200 weekly wafer starts, compared to a virtually unchanged weekly wafer start average of 1,290,300 in the last six months of 1996. Fabs worldwide now have the capacity to produce some 79 million 150-mm equivalent wafers in a year, according to SICAS. Based on the current utilization rate, the industry is capable of producing 69 million 150-mm equivalent wafers this year. In its factory output report, SICAS said fabs worldwide produced some 277,400, 200-mm wafers weekly. This is the first time SICAS has recorded data on 200-mm wafers.