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By Emmy Yi

The solar energy sector shined in a global renewable energy market that maintained steady growth last year despite the United States’ shocking withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. Solar panel costs dropped to an all-time low, driving global demand that surpassed the 100GW mark for the first time on the strength of standout annual 26 percent growth.

Taiwan has vigorously pursued a transition to renewable energy since 2016. Most notably, Taiwan is phasing out nuclear power as it increases its reliance on climate-friendly energy sources and seeks more foreign investment. The hope is also to boost economic growth and create more jobs.

With its limited land space, the region is fertile ground for rooftop photovoltaic system (PV) systems. In 2016, the Taiwan government set out on an ambitious plan to achieve 3,000MW of installed capacity by 2020 – enough to supply electricity for 1 million households while improving air quality, help spruce up the urban landscape and generate jobs.

The SEMI Taiwan Energy Group fully backs the government renewable-energy policy. Earlier this year, the group gathered more than 200 industry professionals and government officials to explore challenges and opportunities in deploying more rooftop PV systems. Here are some key takeaways:

Infrastructure Reliability Key to High Return on Investment

Size, reliability and safety are paramount in rooftop PV system design. To make the best use of space, reduce the cost per kWh, and ensure a long-term, stable supply of electric energy, the PC modules must be:

  • Compact to fit within limited rooftop space
  • Robust to endure extreme temperatures over long periods; resist fire, salt and water damage; and ensure safe, reliable operation

Financial Institutions Play an Important Role

In response to the government energy policy, domestic financial institutions have funded select projects or issued bonds and derivative products to support the development of Taiwan’s renewables industry. A key part of these efforts is to evaluate risks in areas such as system module safety, maturity of technologies and designs, energy-generating efficiency and maintenance costs.

A Truly Green Industry: Circular Economy

Energy storage systems are maturing rapidly to support expanding markets for renewable energy products. The market for home renewable energy systems is growing, fueled in part by low prices, and the adoption of electric vehicles continues to rise as advances in energy storage technology drive down costs and enable longer ranges. At the current pace of technological development, the world could be using 100 percent renewable energy to achieve the goal of zero emission by 2025. However, to achieve a truly pollution-free environment, a circular economy – marked by the regeneration and reuse of resources – must be established.

For its part, the SEMI Taiwan Energy Group this year will transform the 11-year-old PV Taiwan exhibition into Energy Taiwan, Taiwan’s largest international platform for facilitating communication and collaboration of the entire renewable energy ecosystem. Exhibition themes will range from solar energy, wind energy, hydrogen energy and fuel cells to green transportation, smart energy storage and green finance. The event reflects the consolidation of the SEMI Taiwan Energy Group’s growing resources and its commitment to a circular economy free of fossil fuels.

Originally published on the SEMI blog.

KLA-Tencor Corporation (NASDAQ: KLAC) has been recognized by Intel as a recipient of a 2017 Preferred Quality Supplier (PQS) award. The PQS award recognizes companies like KLA-Tencor that Intel believes have relentlessly pursued excellence and conducted business with resolute professionalism.

“The dynamic nature of our business necessitates continuous improvement and an unrelenting focus on quality,” said Jacklyn Sturm, Vice President of Technology and Manufacturing Group and General Manager of Global Supply Management at Intel. “As Intel transitions to become a more data centric company, our award winning suppliers are embracing the most difficult challenges with rapid innovation and bold strategies.”

To qualify for PQS status, suppliers must exceed high expectations and uncompromising performance goals while scoring at least 80 percent on an integrated report card that assesses performance throughout the year. Suppliers must also achieve 80 percent or greater on a challenging continuous improvement plan and demonstrate solid quality and business systems.

BY AJIT MANOCHA, President and CEO of SEMI

2017 was a terrific year for SEMI members. Chip revenues closed at nearly $440B, an impressive 22 percent year- over-year growth. The equipment industry surpassed revenue levels last reached in the year 2000. Semicon- ductor equipment posted sales of nearly $56B and semiconductor materials $48B in 2017. For semiconductor equipment, this was a giant 36 percent year-over-year growth. Samsung, alone, invested $26B in semiconductor CapEx in 2017 – an incredible single year spend in an incredible year.

MEMS and Sensors gained new growth in telecom and medical markets, adding to existing demand from automotive, industrial and consumer segments. MEMS is forecast to be a $19B industry in 2018. Flexible hybrid electronics (FHE) is also experiencing significant product design and functionality growth with increasing gains in widespread adoption.

No longer isa single monolithic demand driver propelling the electronics manufacturing supply chain. The rapidly expanding digital economy continues to foster innovation with new demand from the IoT, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR), automobile infotainment and driver assistance, artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data, among others. With the explosion in data usage, memory demand is nearly insatiable, holding memory device ASPs high and prompting continued heavy investment in new capacity.

2018 is forecast to be another terrific year. IC revenues are expected to increase another 8 percent and semiconductor equipment will grow 11 percent. With diverse digital economy demand continuing, additional manufacturing capacity is being added in China as fab projects come on line to develop and increase the indigenous semiconductor supply chain.

So, why worry?

The cracks starting to show are in the areas of talent, data management, and Environment, Health, and Safety (EH&S).

Can the industry sustain this growth? The electronics manufacturing supply chain has demonstrated it can generally scale and expedite production to meet the massive new investment projects. The cracks starting to show are in the areas of talent, data management, and Environment, Health, and Safety (EH&S).

Talent has become a pinch point. In Silicon Valley alone, SEMI member companies have thousands of open positions. Globally, there are more than 10,000 open jobs. Attracting new candidates and developing a global workforce are critical to sustaining the pace of innovation and growth.
Data management and effective data sharing are keys to solving problems faster and making practical novel but immature processes at the leading edge. It is ironic that other industries are ahead of semiconductor manufac- turing in harnessing manufacturing data and leveraging AI across their supply chains. Without collaborative Smart Data approaches, there is jeopardy of decreasing the cadence of Moore’s Law below the 10 nm node.

EH&S is critical for an industry that now uses the majority of the elements of the periodic table to make chips – at rates of more than 50,000 wafer starts per month (wspm) for a single fab. The industry came together strongly in the 1990s to develop SEMI Safety Standards and compliance methodologies. Since then, the number of EH&S profes- sionals engaged in our industry has declined while the number of new materials has exploded, new processing techniques have been developed, and manufacturing is expanding across China in areas with no prior semicon- ductor manufacturing experience.

HTU has been a very effective program with over 218 sessions run to date, over 7,000 students engaged, and over 70 percent of respondents pursuing careers in the STEM field.

To ensure we don’t slow growth, the industry will need to work together in 2018 in these three key areas:

Talent development needs to rapidly accelerate by expanding currently working programs and adding additional means to fill the talent funnel. The SEMI Foundation’s High Tech University (HTU) works globally with member companies to increase the number of high school students selecting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) fields – and provides orientation to the semiconductor manufacturing industry. HTU has been a very effective program with over 218 sessions run to date, over 7,000 students engaged, and over 70 percent of respondents pursuing careers in the STEM field. SEMI will increase the number of HTU sessions in 2018.

Plans have already been approved by SEMI’s Board of Directors to work together with SEMI’s membership to leverage existing, and pioneer new, workforce development programs to attract and develop qualified candidates from across the age and experience spectrum (high school through university, diversity, etc.). Additionally, an industry awareness campaign will be developed and launched to make more potential candidates attracted to our member companies as a great career choice. I’ll be providing you with updates on this initiative – and asking for your involvement
– throughout 2018.

Data management is a broad term. Big Data, machine learning, AI are terms that today mean different things to different people in our supply chain. What is clear is that to act together and take advantage of the unimaginable amounts of data being generating to produce materials and make semiconductor devices with the diverse equipment sets across our fabs, we need a common understanding of the data and potential use of the data.

In 2018, SEMI will launch a Smart Data vertical application platform to engage stakeholders along the supply chain to produce a common language, develop Standards, and align expectations for sharing data for mutual benefit. Bench- marking of other industries and pre-competitive pilot programs are being proposed to learn and, here too, we need the support and engagement of thought leaders throughout SEMI’s membership.

EH&S activity must intensify to maintain safe operations and to eliminate business interruptions from supply chain disruptions. There is potential for disruptions from material bans such as the Stockholm Convention action on PFOA and arising from the much wider range of chemicals and materials being used in advanced manufacturing. Being able to reliably identify these in time to guide and coordinate industry action will take a reinvigorated SEMI EH&S stewardship and membership engagement.

As China rapidly develops new fabs in many provinces – some with only limited prior experience and infrastructure – SEMI EH&S Standards orientation and training will accelerate the safe and sustainable operation of fabs, enabling them to keep pace with the ambitious growth trajectory our industry is delivering. In 2018, we’ll be looking for a renewed commitment to EH&S and sustainability for the budding challenges of new materials, methods, and emerging regions.

Remarkable results from a remarkable membership

Thank you all for a terrific 2017 and let’s work together on the key initiatives to ensure that our industry’s growth and prosperity will continue in 2018 and beyond.

In a quick review of 2017, I would like to thank SEMI’s members for their incredible results and new revenue records. Foundational to that, SEMI’s members have worked together with SEMI to connect, collaborate, and innovate to increase growth and prosperity for the industry. These founda- tional contributions have been in expositions, programs, Standards, market data, messaging (communications), and workforce development (with HTU).

The infographic below captures these foundational accom- plishments altogether. SEMI strives to speed the time to better business results for its members across the global electronics manufacturing supply chain. To do so, SEMI is dependent upon, and grateful for, the support and volunteer efforts of its membership. Thank you for a terrific 2017 and let’s work together on the key initiatives to ensure that our industry’s growth and prosperity will continue in 2018 and beyond.

Since the global economic recession of 2008-2009, the IC industry has been on a mission to pare down older capacity (i.e., ≤200mm wafers) in order to produce devices more cost-effectively on larger wafers. The spree of merger and acquisition activity and the migration to producing IC devices using sub-20nm process technology has also led suppliers to eliminate inefficient wafer fabs. From 2009-2017, semiconductor manufacturers around the world have closed or repurposed 92 wafer fabs, according to data compiled, updated, and now available in IC Insights’ Global Wafer Capacity 2018-2022 report.

Figure 1 shows that since 2009, 41% of fab closures have been 150mm fabs and 26% have been 200mm wafer fabs. 300mm wafer fabs have accounted for only 10% of total fab closures since 2009. Qimonda was the first company to close a 300mm wafer fab after it went out of business in early 2009.

Figure 1

Figure 1

More recently, ProMOS closed two 300mm memory fabs in 2013 and Renesas sold its 300mm logic fab to Sony in 2014.  Sony repurposed that fab to make image sensors.  In 2017, Samsung closed its 300mm Line 11 memory fab in Yongin, South Korea, also repurposing it to manufacture image sensors. Semiconductor suppliers in Japan have closed a total of 34 wafer fabs since 2009, more than any other country/region.   In the 2009-2017 timeframe, 30 fabs were closed in North America and 17 shuttered in Europe, and only 11 wafer fabs were closed throughout the Asia-Pacific region (Figure 2).

Figure 2

Figure 2

Worldwide fab closures surged in 2009 and 2010 partly as a result of the severe economic recession at the end of the previous decade.  A total of 25 fabs were closed in 2009, followed by 22 being shut down in 2010.  Ten fabs closed in 2012 and 2013.  Two fabs were closed in 2015, the fewest number of closures per year during the 2009-2017 time span.  In 2017, 3 wafer fabs were removed from service. IC Insights has identified three wafer fabs (two 150mm fabs, one 200mm fab) that are targeted for closure this year and next.

Given the flurry of merger and acquisition activity seen in the semiconductor industry recently, the skyrocketing cost of new wafer fabs and manufacturing equipment, and as more IC companies transition to a fab-lite or fabless business model, IC Insights expects more fab closures in the coming years—a prediction that will likely please IC foundry suppliers.

Nordson Corporation (NASDAQ: NDSN) announces that the SEMI Foundation has appointed Joseph Stockunas, Corporate Vice President for Electronics Systems at Nordson Corporation and the immediate past chair of the SEMI North America Advisory Board, to the SEMI Foundation Board of Trustees in accordance with the association’s by-laws.

“We are excited to leverage Joe’s passion for innovation and his desire to help young people make thoughtful education and career choices,” said Leslie Tugman, Executive Director of the SEMI Foundation. “As the Foundation’s vision is expanding to address the larger industry workforce development pipeline and leadership in the area of women’s issues, Joe’s talent, industry insight, and commitment will be a great asset.”

The mission of the SEMI Foundation is to support education and career awareness in the field of high technology. The SEMI Foundation produces SEMI High Tech U (HTU), a three-day interactive program that encourages high school students to pursue academic paths that emphasize science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) and to expose them to high technology careers such as semiconductor manufacturing.

The Nordson Corporation Foundation sponsored its first HTU program February 12 – 15, 2018 at the Nordson facility in Carlsbad, California. This was one of the first HTU events to be held in Southern California. Forty high school students from five local high schools, including Carlsbad, Sage Creek, San Marcos, Rancho Buena Vista, and Mission Hills, attended the program, where they learned from industry instructors and visited the UC San Diego campus for a look at college life. The Nordson Corporation Foundation is dedicated to improving the quality of life in its communities by improving educational outcomes that enable individuals to become self-sufficient, active participants in the community.

Stockunas has a long history of engaging and supporting STEM activities and the workforce development pipeline. Stockunas sponsored SEMI High Tech U at Air Products in Pennsylvania where he had previously worked for 30 years. In 2013, he joined Nordson Corporation, and has helped facilitate the company’s sponsorship of SEMI High Tech U in 2018.

“I have been a long-time supporter of the SEMI Foundation’s High Tech U program, which helps students make the connection between familiar electronic products and future career choices in high tech,” said Joe Stockunas. “I look forward to working with the Board to help drive new initiatives to support young people and strengthen the industry workforce.”

The latest market research report by Technavio on the global semiconductor IP market predicts a CAGR of close to 10% during the period 2018-2022.

The report segments the global semiconductor IP market by application (healthcare, networking, industrial automation, automotive, consumer electronics, and mobile computing devices), by end-user (fabless semiconductor companies, IDMs, and foundries), and by geography (North America, APAC, and Europe). It provides a detailed illustration of the major factors influencing the market, including drivers, opportunities, trends, and industry-specific challenges.

Here are some key findings of the global semiconductor IP market, according to Technavio hardware and semiconductor researchers:

  • Complex chip designs and use of multi-core technologies: a major market driver
  • Proliferation of wireless technologies: emerging market trend
  • North America dominated the global semiconductor IP market with 47% share in 2016

Complex chip designs and use of multi-core technologies: a major market driver

Nowadays, the electronic device manufacturers develop products that have better functionalities while offering power-packed performances as compared to their earlier products. This is driving the semiconductor chip manufacturers to ensure that their IC designs are capable of and reliable for offer maximum use in terms of performance, which is propelling the product development process in the semiconductor industry.

Players in the market are competing against each other based on timely delivery of offerings while ensuring high performing and multi-functional devices. Semiconductor manufacturers are incorporating new and complex architecture and designs of semiconductor ICs to deliver high-end multi-functional products. For example, 3D ICs are compact, consume less power, and are more efficient in performance. They have a complex electronic circuit design and manufacturing process. Such complexity tends to hamper the overall productivity of the industry.

 

Proliferation of wireless technologies: emerging market trend

In the last 25 years, IoT has evolved a great deal. Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) that was in the development phase since 1990 is replacing Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4). This allows many hosts to connect to the Internet and increases the data traffic that can be transmitted.

The popularity of mobile computing devices has helped the network traffic to grow at an exponential rate. This led to the continued deployment of next-generation wireless standards such as 4G and 5G, and wireless technologies such as Bluetooth low energy (BLE), Wi-Fi, ZigBee, and Z-Wave across the globe. Such wireless standards and wireless technologies offer a wireless connection that is equivalent to broadband connections that have resulted in an increase in the number of users accessing the Internet from anywhere and at any time.

According to a senior analyst at Technavio for research on semiconductor equipment, “At present, ZigBee is one of the three leading wireless technology used for connected devices such as connected bulbs, remote controls, smart meters, smart thermostats, and set-top boxes. High-bandwidth and content-rich applications such as audio, video, gaming, and Internet use the Wi-Fi technology. BLE is used for low power applications and is primarily used to connect wearables to smartphones. ZigBee is a low power version of Wi-Fi which is appropriate for smart home applications such as lighting, remote controls, security, and thermostats.”

Global market opportunities

In terms of regional dominance, North America led the global semiconductor IP market, followed by APAC and Europe in 2017. However, APAC is expected to grow at a faster rate due to increased prevalence of orthopedic surgical procedures. The emerging economies like China and Taiwan contributed to the growth of this market in APAC.

The market share of North America is expected to decrease during the forecast period due to factors such as strong governmental policies against exports from the governments of South Korea, Japan, China, and India, who want to become completely self-sufficient in the semiconductor industry.

 

ON Semiconductor (Nasdaq: ON) today announced its top distribution partners for 2017. These awards honor the distributor in each region that led overall channel sales, grew market share, captured increased sales of products from ON Semiconductor’s acquisitions and scored highly on overall process excellence.

The top 2017 distribution partners are:

“Distribution sales accounted for approximately 60 percent of ON Semiconductor’s 2017 annual revenues,” said Jeff Thomson, vice president of global channel sales for ON Semiconductor. “The support of our worldwide distribution partners is fundamental to the success of ON Semiconductor’s ongoing plans to increase market penetration and growing revenue at a faster pace than the industry. The collaborative relationships and progressive sales programs we foster with our channel partners are an integral part of this ongoing plan. As advocates of these goals, each of the 2017 distribution partner award winners successfully grew product sales, generated significant new business, and effectively supported both our customers’ needs and ON Semiconductor’s initiatives for operational excellence. We are pleased to recognize these outstanding channel partners for their valuable contributions throughout 2017 and look forward to continued success in the coming year.”

Air Products (NYSE: APD) today announced it has been awarded the industrial gases supply for Samsung Electronics’ second semiconductor fab in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province, western China.

The Xi’an fabrication line, within the Xi’an High-tech Zone (XHTZ), represents one of Samsung’s largest overseas investments and one of the most advanced fabs in China. It produces three-dimensional (3D) vertical NAND (V-NAND) flash memory chips for a wide range of applications, including embedded NAND storage, solid state drives, mobile devices, and other consumer electronics products.

Air Products has been supporting this project since 2014 from a large site housing two large air separation units (ASUs), a hydrogen plant and a bulk specialty gas delivery system. Under the new award, Air Products will expand its site by building several large ASUs, hydrogen and compressed dry air plants, and a bulk specialty gas supply yard to supply ultra-high purity nitrogen, oxygen, argon, hydrogen and compressed dry air to the new fab, which is scheduled to be operational in 2019.

“Samsung is a strategic and longstanding customer for Air Products. It is our honor to have their continued confidence and again be selected to support their business growth and this important project in western China,” said Kyo-Yung Kim, president of Air Products Korea, who also oversees the company’s electronics investment in the XHTZ. “We have been supplying the project with proven safety, reliability and operational excellence. This latest investment further reinforces our global leading position and commitment to serving our valued customer, as well as the broader semiconductor and electronics industries.”

Continuing to build its strong relationship with Samsung Electronics, Air Products also recently announced the next phases of expansion to build two more nitrogen plants serving the customer’s giga fab in Pyeongtaek City, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea.

A leading integrated gases supplier, Air Products has been serving the global electronics industry for more than 40 years, supplying industrial gases safely and reliably to most of the world’s largest technology companies. Air Products is working with these industry leaders to develop the next generation of semiconductors and displays for tablets, computers and mobile devices.

Microprocessors, which first appeared in the early 1970s as 4-bit computing devices for calculators, are among the most complex integrated circuits on the market today.  During the past four decades, powerful microprocessors have evolved into highly parallel multi-core 64-bit designs that contain all the functions of a computer’s central processing unit (CPU) as well as a growing number of system-level functions and accelerator blocks for graphics, video, and emerging artificial intelligence (AI) applications.  MPUs are the “brains” of personal computers, servers, and large mainframes, but they can also be used for embedded processing in a wide range of systems, such as networking gear, computer peripherals, medical and industrial equipment, cars, televisions, set-top boxes, video-game consoles, wearable products and Internet of Things applications.  The recently released 2018 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report shows that the fastest growing types of microprocessors in the last five years have been mobile system-on-chip (SoC) designs for tablets and data-handling cellphones and MPUs used in embedded-processing applications (Figure 1).

Figure 1

Figure 1

The McClean Report also forecasts that 52% of 2018 MPU sales will come from sales of all types of microprocessors used as CPUs in standard PCs, servers, and large computers.  As shown in Figure 2, only about 16% of MPU sales are expected from embedded applications in 2018, with the rest coming from mobile application processors used in tablets (4%) and cellphones (28%).  Cellphone and tablet MPUs exclude baseband processors, which handle modem transmissions in cellular networks and are counted in the wireless communications segment of the special-purpose logic IC product category. A little over half of 2018 microprocessor sales are expected to come from x86 MPUs for computer CPUs sold by Intel and rival Advanced Micro Devices.

Figure 2

Figure 2

Cellphone and tablet SoC processors were the main growth drivers in microprocessors during the first half of this decade, but slowdowns have hit both of these MPU categories since 2015.  Market saturation and the maturing of the smartphone segment have stalled unit growth in cellular handsets.  Cellphone application processor shipments were flat in 2016 and 2017 and are forecast to rise just 0.3% in 2018 to reach a record high of nearly 1.8 billion units in the year.

The microprocessor business continues to be dominated by the world’s largest IC maker, Intel (Samsung was the world’s largest semiconductor supplier in 2017). Intel’s share of total MPU sales had been more than 75% during most of the last decade, but that percentage is now slightly less than 60% because of stronger growth in cellphones and tablets that contain ARM-based SoC processors.  For nearly 20 years, Intel’s huge MPU business for personal computers has primarily competed with just one other major x86 processor supplier—AMD—but increases in the use of smartphones and tablets to access the Internet for a variety of applications has caused a paradigm shift in personal computing, which is often characterized as the “Post-PC era.”

This year, AMD looks to continue its aggressive comeback effort in x86-based server processors that it started in 2017 with the rollout of highly parallel MPUs built with the company’s new Zen microarchitecture. Intel has responded by increasing the number of 64-bit x86 CPUs in its Xeon processors. Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and others are also increasing emphasis of processors and co-processor accelerators for machine-learning AI in servers, personal computing platforms, smartphones and embedded processing.

The 2018 McClean Report shows that the total MPU market is forecast to rise 4% to $74.5 billion in 2018, following market growth of 5% in 2017 and 9% in 2016.  Through 2022, total MPU sales are expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 3.4%.  Total microprocessor units are expected to rise 2% in 2018, the same growth rate as 2017, to 2.6 billion units.  Through the forecast period, total MPU units are forecast to rise by a CAGR of 2.1%.

Worldwide shipments of devices — PCs, tablets and mobile phones — totaled 2.28 billion units in 2017, according to Gartner, Inc. Shipments are on course to reach 2.32 billion units in 2018, an increase of 2.1 percent.

Two markets will drive overall growth in device shipments in 2018. First is the mobile phone market, led by the high-end smartphone segment. Second is the premium ultramobile market, where thin and light Apple and Microsoft Windows 10 devices are stimulating higher demand.

“Consumers have many technologies to choose from, which poses two main challenges for vendors. The first is to compete for wallet share, given how many devices consumers own. The second is to deliver value and maintain relevance — to offer the right device to the right audience,” said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner. “We will see more buyers focusing on value, rather than just price, and therefore considering higher-priced devices.”

PC market will be flat in 2018

Gartner forecasts that shipments of traditional PCs will decline by 5.4 percent in 2018 (see Table 1), with notebooks showing the steepest decline (6.8 percent). The premium ultramobile market will be the only PC segment to achieve growth in 2018, without which the overall PC market would decline.

“DRAM costs have doubled since June 2016, and PC providers have increased PC prices since the first half of 2017,” added Mr. Atwal. “This trend is likely to continue into 2018, until DRAM cost trends reverse.”

Table 1

Worldwide Device Shipments by Device Type, 2016-2019 (Millions of Units)

Device Type

2016

2017

2018

2019

Traditional PCs (Desk-Based and Notebook)

220

204

193

187

Ultramobiles (Premium)

50

59

70

80

Total PC Market

270

262

264

267

Ultramobiles (Basic and Utility)

169

160

159

156

Computing Device Market

439

423

423

423

Mobile Phones

1,893

1,855

1,903

1,924

Total Device Market

2,332

2,278

2,326

2,347

Source: Gartner (January 2018)

 By 2021, 9 percent of smartphones sold will support 5G

Gartner forecasts that mobile phone shipments will increase by 2.6 percent in 2018, with the total amounting to 1.9 billion units. In 2018, smartphone sales will grow by 6.2 percent, to represent 87 percent of mobile phone sales. “We expect Apple smartphone sales to grow by more than the market average in 2018, with the launch of new models fueling stronger replacement cycles,” said Roberta Cozza, research director at Gartner.

In 2018, smartphone vendors will focus on delivering more compelling personalized experiences, via on-device (AI), virtual personal assistants and more natural user interfaces, but also through biometrics and further enhancements to display and camera features. We expect to see some of these unveiled at Mobile World Congress 2018 in Barcelona.

5G phones will reach the market in 2019, when rollouts of 5G networks will start in select countries, such as the U.S. and South Korea. “We predict that, by 2021, 9 percent of smartphones sold will support 5G,” said Ms. Cozza. “Overall, 5G will be a significant driver of video and streaming services, as it will bring faster uplinks and support new AI applications.”