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By Christian G. Dieseldorff, Industry Research & Statistics Group, SEMI (January 25, 2016)

The industry’s first and only ‘Global 200mm Fab Outlook report to 2018’ reveals a change in the landscape for 200mm fab capacity.

Figure 1

In comparing 2006 versus 2018, memory capacity share of 200mm has declined to just about 2% as most memory production has migrated to 300mm fabs . A similar transition to 300mm has occurred in Logic/MPU device production.

On the other hand, we see strong 200mm capacity growth from Discrete/Power, MEMS, and Analog segments in part to the transition from 150mm production to 200mm production. Foundry has also been gaining share, driven by strong demand for PMIC, display driver IC, CMOS image sensor, MCU, MEMS, and other devices requiring >90nm process technology. These device technologies are cited as key components for many IoT applications.

Based on these observations, the IoT wave appears to be breathing new life into 200mm fabs. Before the advent of the IoT movement began, 2012 data suggested a decline in 200mm fabs. However, comparing the worldwide installed capacity for 200mm in 6 year intervals, we expect capacity to return to 2006 levels by 2018.

Figure 2

A number of 200mm fab projects globally are being expanded or built through the end of 2018, resulting in capacity growth through the end of that year.

The 200mm Fab Outlook report to 2018 is the industry’s first and one-of-a kind 200mm fab outlook report. It features analysis and forecasts (tables, graphs and text) in over 80 pages in Adobe Acrobat, accompanied by detailed data in an Excel spreadsheet.

This report is of critical interest to anyone who participates in the 200mm device manufacturing supply chain. The Global 200mm Fab Outlook report analyzes past trends and explores future trends out to 2018, extending the forecast period of our existing Fab Database reports.

In this new report, SEMI tracks over 200 facilities manufacturing devices on 200mm wafers, including those that are planned, under construction, installing new equipment, active, closing, or closed.  Over 110 individual companies or institutions are covered. Fab information detailed in the report includes geographic location, amount of equipment spending, capacity trends, and product type changes.

Here are some of the key highlights from the report:

  • Trend of 200mm fab count and capacity out to 2018 (compared to 150mm and 300mm)
  • 200mm Silicon wafer shipment trends
  • Capacity addition by existing and new fabs out to 2018
  • Fabs changing from smaller wafer sizes to 200mm
  • Fabs changing from 200mm to other wafer sizes (like 300mm)
  • Fabs closed (and still closed), will be closed and may be closed by region and product type
  • Fabs/lines starting operation
  • Fabs/lines losing capacity
  • Change of landscape 2006 vs 2018: capacity by region, product type and technology node
  • Top 20 companies adding capacity 2015 to 2018
  • Capacity by region 2015 to 2018
  • Capacity by product type 2015 to 2018
  • Top 20 companies for equipment spending 2015 to 2018
  • Change of landscape equipment spending 2006 vs 2018

For more information on SEMI market research and reports, visit: www.semi.org/en/MarketInfo

Samsung Electronics and Apple remained the top semiconductor buyers in 2015, representing 17.7 percent of the market, according to Gartner, Inc. Samsung Electronics and Apple together consumed $59.0 billion of semiconductors in 2015, an increase of $0.8 billion from 2014 (see Table 1).

“Samsung Electronics and Apple have topped the semiconductor consumption table for five consecutive years, but the growth of Samsung’s design total available market (TAM) was lower than the total semiconductor market in 2014 and 2015,” said Masatsune Yamaji, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Samsung and Lenovo, the fastest-growing companies over the last five years, decreased their design TAM in 2015 and the risk of revenue declines from the strongest customers for semiconductor chip vendors is increasing.”

The top 10 companies bought $123 billion of semiconductors, to account for 36.9 percent of semiconductor chip vendors’ worldwide revenue in 2015. This was down from 37.9 percent in 2014, which was worse than the semiconductor industry’s global total decrease of 1.9 percent.

Table 1. Preliminary Ranking of Top 10 Companies by Semiconductor Design TAM, Worldwide, 2015 (Millions of Dollars)

 

 

2014 Ranking

 

 

2015 Ranking

 

 

 

Company

 

 

 

2014

 

 

 

2015

 

 

Growth (%) 2014-2015

 

 

 2015 Market

Share (%) 

1

1

Samsung Electronics

30,989

29,867

-3.6

8.9

2

2

Apple

27,177

29,116

7.1

8.7

4

3

Lenovo

13,743

13,329

-3.0

4.0

5

4

Dell

10,880

10,686

-1.8

3.2

3

5

HP Inc.

15,616

8,634

-44.7

2.6

7

6

Huawei

6,040

7,020

16.2

2.1

6

7

Sony

7,631

6,947

-9.0

2.1

–

8

Hewlett Packard Enterprise

0

6,473

–

1.9

9

9

LG Electronics

5,743

5,533

-3.7

1.7

8

10

Cisco Systems

5,817

5,430

-6.7

1.6

Others

216,695

210,684

-2.8

63.1

Total

340,331

333,718

-1.9

100.0

Note: Some columns do not add to totals shown because of rounding.

Source: Gartner (January 2016)

The market decline happened partly because HP spun off its enterprise business, which bumped Toshiba from the top 10. Toshiba’s design TAM in 2015 was $4.6 billion, so the top 10 companies in 2014 (including HP Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Toshiba) represented $127.6 billion of semiconductors in 2015 on a design TAM basis, to account for 38.2 percent of semiconductor chip vendors’ worldwide revenue.

As the growth of the personal electronic device market continues to slow, the risk of revenue declines from the strongest customers for semiconductor chip vendors is increasing. Many semiconductor chip vendors, especially general-purpose chip vendors, are trying to reduce the dependency on a limited number of extremely large customers, such as Samsung Electronics, Apple and Lenovo, and are making an effort to diversify their sales targets to the fragmented long-tail small customers, so as to stabilize their business growth with a mass-marketing approach.

“Nine of the top 10 companies in the design TAM ranking for 2014 remained in the top 10 in 2015, but seven of the top 10 decreased their semiconductor demand in 2015,” said Mr. Yamaji. “The slowing of Samsung’s design TAM since 2014 should be considered a big trend change. The cycle of an inflated boom and the obsolescence of electronic equipment are becoming faster, and it is also much more difficult for leading companies to maintain their position for a long time. Current winners may not always be the winners in the future.”

More detailed analysis is available in the report “Market Insight: Top 10 Semiconductor Chip Buyers, Worldwide, 2015 (Preliminary).”

North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted $1.34 billion in orders worldwide in December 2015 (three-month average basis) and a book-to-bill ratio of 0.99, according to the December EMDS Book-to-Bill Report published today by SEMI.  A book-to-bill of 0.99 means that $99 worth of orders were received for every $100 of product billed for the month.

SEMI reports that the three-month average of worldwide bookings in December 2015 was $1.34 billion. The bookings figure is 8.6 percent higher than the final November 2015 level of $1.24 billion, and is 2.8  percent lower than the December 2014 order level of $1.38 billion.

The three-month average of worldwide billings in December 2015 was $1.35 billion. The billings figure is 4.9 percent higher than the final November 2015 level of $1.29 billion, and is 3.2 percent lower than the December 2014 billings level of $1.40 billion.

“Both semiconductor equipment bookings and billings improved in December,” said Denny McGuirk, president and CEO of SEMI.  “Despite softness in the equipment market in the fourth quarter, both annual bookings and billings in 2015 of North American equipment suppliers remained above 2014 levels.”

The SEMI book-to-bill is a ratio of three-month moving averages of worldwide bookings and billings for North American-based semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Billings and bookings figures are in millions of U.S. dollars.

Billings
(3-mo. avg)

Bookings
(3-mo. avg)

Book-to-Bill
July 2015

$1,556.2

$1,587.3

1.02
August 2015

$1,575.9

$1,670.1

1.06
September 2015

$1,495.0

$1,554.9

1.04
October 2015

$1,358.6

$1,325.6

0.98
November 2015 (final)

$1,288.3

$1,236.6

0.96
December 2015 (prelim)

$1,351.8

$1,342.7

0.99

Source: SEMI (www.semi.org), January 2016

Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total $3.54 trillion dollars in 2016, just a 0.6 percent increase over 2015 spending of $3.52 trillion dollars, according to Gartner, Inc. 2015 saw the largest U.S. dollar drop in IT spending since Gartner began tracking IT spending. $216 billion dollars less was spent on IT in 2015 than in 2014 and 2014 spending levels won’t be surpassed until 2019.

“The rising U.S. dollar is the villain behind 2015 results,” said John-David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner. “U.S. multinationals’ revenue faced currency headwinds in 2015. However, in 2016 those headwinds go away and they can expect an additional 5 percent growth.”

The Gartner Worldwide IT Spending Forecast is the leading indicator of major technology trends across the hardware, software, IT services and telecom markets. For more than a decade, global IT and business executives have been using these highly anticipated quarterly reports to recognize market opportunities and challenges, and base their critical business decisions on proven methodologies rather than guesswork.

Table 1. Worldwide IT Spending Forecast (Billions of U.S. Dollars)

 

2015 Spending

2015 Growth (%)

2016 Spending

2016 Growth (%)
Data Center Systems

170

1.8

175

3.0
Software

310

-1.4

326

5.3
Devices

653

-5.8

641

-1.9
IT Services

912

-4.5

940

3.1
Communications Services

1,472

-8.3

1,454

-1.2
Overall IT

3,517

-5.8

3,536

0.6

Source: Gartner (January 2016)

The devices market (PCs, ultramobiles, mobile phones, tablets and printers) is forecast to decline 1.9 percent in 2016. The combination of economic conditions preventing countries such as Russia, Japan and Brazil from returning to stronger growth, together with a shift in phone spending in emerging markets to lower-cost phones, is overlaid with weak tablet adoption in regions where there was an expectation of growth.

Ultramobile premium devices are expected to drive the PC market forward with the move to Windows 10 and Intel Skylake-based PCs. Gartner has slightly reduced the speed of adoption over the forecast period, as buying in Eurasia, Japan, and the Middle East and North Africa moves away from purchasing these relatively more expensive devices in the short term, but expect them to revert back to buying in 2017 as the economic environment stabilizes.

Data center systems’ spending is projected to reach $75 billion in 2016, a 3.0 percent increase from 2015. The server market is the segment that has seen the largest change since the previous quarter’s forecast. The server market has seen stronger-than-expected demand from the hyperscale sector, which has lasted longer than expected. Typically, this segment has spikey demand which lasts for a couple of quarters before moderating. Demand in this segment is expected to continue to be strong through 2016.

The worsening economic environment in emerging markets has had little effect on the global enterprise software spending forecast for 2016, with IT spending on pace to total $326 billion, a 5.3 percent increase from 2015. However, key countries in emerging markets, particularly Brazil and Russia, face escalating political and economic challenges. Organizations in those regions must balance cost cutting with growth opportunities during times of economic concern.

Spending in the IT services market is expected to return to growth in 2016, following a decline of 4.5 percent in 2015. IT services spending is projected to reach 940 billion in 2016, up 3.1 percent from 2015. This is due to accelerating momentum in cloud infrastructure adoption and buyer acceptance of the cloud model.

Telecom services spending is projected to decline 1.2 percent in 2016, with spending reaching $1,454 trillion. The segment will be impacted by the abolition of roaming charges in the European Union and parts of North America. While this will increase mobile voice and data traffic, it will not be enough to counter the corresponding loss of revenue from lost roaming charges and premiums.

More-detailed analysis on the outlook for the IT industry will be presented in the webinar “IT Spending Forecast, 4Q15 Update: What Will Make Headlines in 2016.”

SET, Smart Equipment Technology, the supplier in high accuracy die-to-die and die-to-wafer bonders, today announced its participation in the 3D integration consortium of IRT Nanoelec, which is headed by CEA-Leti.  SET joins Leti, STMicroelectronics and Mentor Graphics to develop advanced 3D die-to-wafer stacking technologies, using direct copper-to-copper bonding.

Based in Grenoble, France, IRT Nanoelec is an R&D center focused on information and communication technologies (ICT) using micro- and nanoelectronics. 3D integration is one of its core programs.

The 3D integration program was launched in 2012. It brings together, under a single roof, expertise and equipment addressing the entire 3D integration value chain: technology, circuit architecture, EDA tools, packaging and test. Mentor Graphics (EDA), ST (foundry) and Leti are the founding members of the consortium.

“All SET employees, and in particular the team involved in the 3D project, are proud and enthusiastic to join IRT Nanoelec,” said Pascal Metzger, CEO of SET. “Our integration in this program is a logical continuation of the collaboration initiated with CEA teams 35 years ago on different bonding projects, including laboratory high-precision bonder for Cu-Cu direct bonding. One of the key factors for SET joining this consortium is the opportunity to meet and discuss with experts from different specialties.”

“Maintaining high accuracy for components assembly as well as good control of the parameters, while increasing dramatically the throughput, is a real challenge, but we are eager to start the daily work together with IRT teams to reach our mutual goals,” said Nicolas Raynaud, project manager at SET.

Séverine Chéramy, director of IRT Nanoelec’s 3D integration program, said the objective is to offer designers 3D die-to-wafer stacking at an aggressive pitch – less than 10µm – at high speed, at room temperature and without pressure or underfill.

“I’m particularly proud to welcome SET, a French SME, to the program, because it shows the complementarity of the scope of work,” she said. “The collaboration with SET on die-to-wafer bonding, using copper-to-copper bonding at very high accuracy and high speed, is really exciting and challenging. The consortium’s knowledge of such bonding techniques, combined with expertise on high-accuracy SET equipment, offers many opportunities for heterogeneous 3D integration that address a wide range of potential applications. These include imaging, sensors, logic and photonics.”

Nanoelec Research Technological Institute (IRT), headed by CEA-Leti conducts research and development in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) and, specifically, micro- and nanoelectronics

Qualcomm Incorporated and TDK Corporation today announced an agreement to form a joint venture to enable delivery of RF front-end (RFFE) modules and RF filters into fully integrated systems for mobile devices and fast-growing business segments, such as Internet of Things (IoT), drones, robotics, automotive applications and more, under the name RF360 Holdings Singapore PTE. Ltd. (RF360 Holdings). The joint venture will draw upon TDK’s capabilities in micro-acoustic RF filtering, packaging and module integration technologies and Qualcomm’s expertise in advanced wireless technologies to serve customers with leading-edge RF solutions into fully integrated systems.

In addition to creating RF360 Holdings, Qualcomm and TDK will expand their collaboration around key technology fields, including sensors and wireless charging.

The agreement is subject to receipt of regulatory approvals and other closing conditions and is expected to close by early 2017.

“TDK is a leading electronic components manufacturer with cutting-edge expertise in RF filters and modules, and we are looking forward to deepening our collaboration and together accelerating innovation and better serving the ecosystem for next-generation mobile communications,” said Steve Mollenkopf, CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated. “The joint venture’s RF filters will bolster Qualcomm RF360 front-end solutions to enable Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (QTI) to deliver a truly complete solution to the ecosystem. This will enable us to expand our growth opportunity by allowing us to accelerate our strategy to provide OEMs across our business segments with fully integrated systems that will enable them to deliver at scale and on an accelerated timeframe.”

“The joint venture with Qualcomm is a win for both companies, which complement each other ideally,” said Mr. Takehiro Kamigama, President and CEO of TDK. “Customers will benefit from our unique and comprehensive portfolio, which will further strengthen TDK’s position in key growth business segments and open new and exciting business opportunities. In this context, it was a major objective to ensure that our customers can continue to expect a seamless supply of discrete filters and duplexers, as well as modules.”

RF360 Holdings poised to meet challenging RF industry requirements

As one of the world’s most dynamic and fast-moving global industries, mobile communications is placing growing demands on all players. Current and future smartphones, for example, must support dozens of frequency bands for 2G, 3G and 4G LTE, while offering connectivity for wireless LAN, satellite navigation, Bluetooth, and more. In addition, the convergence of 4G mobile communications and the IoT means that manufacturers of wireless solutions for mobile IoT devices must achieve new levels of miniaturization, integration and performance, especially for the RFFE in these devices. Further, 5G will expand this complexity even more. Module solutions will be essential to supporting this increasing complexity in the RFFE.

Together with RF360 Holdings, QTI will be ideally positioned to design products from the modem/transceiver to the antenna in a fully integrated system.

RF360 Holdings will have a comprehensive set of filters and filter technologies, including surface acoustic wave (SAW), temperature-compensated surface acoustic wave (TC-SAW) and bulk acoustic wave (BAW) to support the wide range of frequency bands being deployed in networks across the globe. Moreover, RF360 Holdings will enable the delivery of RFFE modules that will include front-end components designed and developed by QTI. These components include CMOS, SOI and GaAS Power Amplifiers, a broad portfolio of Switches enhanced via a recent acquisition, Antenna Tuning and the industry’s leading Envelope Tracking solution.

RFFE is an $18 billion US dollar opportunity by 2020 — with filters acting as a key driver of this opportunity. The filter assets that will reside in RF360 Holdings currently are among the top 3 in the industry. TDK is currently shipping in excess of 25 million filter functions per day, and growing, and holds design wins at all major handset OEMs, including leading premium tier smartphones. TDK, and subsequently RF360 Holdings, are committed to investing in capacity increases to meet the growing industry demand. The business that will be transferred constitutes a part of the total TDK SAW Business Group activities and the current run rate is approaching $1 billion US dollars of sales per annum and approximately 4200 employees are involved in that business. RF360 Holdings will be a Singapore corporation and will have a global presence, with R&D, manufacturing and/or sales locations in the US, Europe and Asia and its headquarters function in Munich, Germany.

Deepening collaboration between Qualcomm and TDK

In addition to the joint venture, Qualcomm and TDK have agreed to deepen their technological cooperation to cover a wide range of cutting-edge technologies for next-generation mobile communications, IoT and automotive applications, including passive components, batteries, wireless charging, sensors, MEMS and more.

SEMI today announced the recipients of the 2015 SEMI Awards for the Americas. The awards honor Chenming Hu for the BSIM families of compact transistor models, Alex Lidow for commercialization of GaN power devices, and an Intel team for implementation of bulk CMOS FinFET production. The awards were presented at the 2016 SEMI Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) yesterday in Half Moon Bay, Calif.

Some innovations become such an integral part of the semiconductor manufacturing industry’s infrastructure that the technology itself becomes fundamental.  2015 award recipients all share the distinction of having pioneered processes and integration breakthroughs that became ubiquitous.

For developing the Berkeley Short-channel Insulated-gate FET Model (BSIM) families of compact transistor models, enabling worldwide adoption of advanced device technologies, Professor Chenming Hu was presented with the 2015 Americas SEMI award. Analog circuit simulators, such as Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis (SPICE), form the foundation for circuit simulators used in integrated circuit design, and compact transistor models are the heart of simulators. BSIM3 and its successors, developed in the BSIM group at University of California Berkeley under the leadership of Professor Hu, are the industry standard for transistor modeling. For the past 20+ years, all commercial circuit simulators have included BSIM models.

The Americas SEMI award was presented to Dr. Alex Lidow, Ph.D., for innovation in power device technology enabling commercialization of GaN devices with performance and cost advantages over silicon.  Silicon-based devices were reaching their limits in speed and efficiency, prompting Lidow to develop Gallium Nitride (GaN) technologies, but high cost limited its commercial success. Lidow led the GaN development activity at International Rectifier and continued that work at Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC), a company he co-founded in 2007.  EPC introduced the first commercial enhancement mode GaN power transistors in 2009. Challenges from resolving packaging limitations to establishing a low-cost supply chain were overcome through persistence, paving the way for the successful commercialization of GaN power devices.

An Intel development team ─ Christopher P. Auth, Robert S. Chau, Brian S. Doyle, Tahir Ghani and Kaizad R. Mistry ─ were honored with SEMI Awards for the first development, integration and introduction of a successful bulk FinFET technology for CMOS IC production, first implemented at the 22nm node in 2011. The successful introduction of a bulk FinFET process in commercial IC logic and I/O devices, aided by support from SEMI member companies with development of advanced materials, processes and production tools, was a critically important milestone, which led to the widespread adoption of bulk FinFETs as the technology of choice of leading-edge, fully-depleted CMOS logic devices.

“It is a great privilege to present the 2015 SEMI Awards to these fine technologists, and it is an honor to recognize their contributions to the advancement of technology. It’s innovators like these that propel the industry forward and I thank them for their leadership,” said Karen Savala, president, SEMI Americas.

“The 2015 SEMI Awards recognize contributions in modeling and simulation as well as successful commercialization of new types of logic transistors and power devices,” said Bill Bottoms, chairman of the SEMI Award Advisory Committee. “These important milestones played an enabling role in maintaining the rate of progress in size, cost, performance and efficiency of semiconductor devices and accelerated the commercialization of new device types for logic and power.”

The SEMI Award was established in 1979 to recognize outstanding technical achievement and meritorious contribution in the areas of Semiconductor Materials, Wafer Fabrication, Assembly and Packaging, Process Control, Test and Inspection, Robotics and Automation, Quality Enhancement, and Process Integration.

The award is the highest honor conferred by SEMI. It is open to individuals or teams from industry or academia whose specific accomplishments have broad commercial impact and widespread technical significance for the entire semiconductor industry. Nominations are accepted from individuals of Americas-based member companies of SEMI. For a list of past award recipients, visit www.semi.org/semiaward.

Technavio’s market research analysts estimate the semiconductor capital spending market in the US, to grow at a CAGR of around 9% between 2015 and 2019. The most prominent segment in global semiconductor industry has been memory, logic, MPU and analog, which made up almost 75% of the total semiconductor demand. Semiconductor technology is continuously growing with emergence of advanced technology, leading to increased investments in this segment.

The new market research report from Technavio provides a breakdown and analysis of the semiconductor capital spending market segments by technology.

“One of the interesting trends gaining traction in the market is the rise in China’s semiconductor industry. China’s semiconductor industry has a significant influence on the capital spending in the US semiconductor industry. Even though, there are a large number of local semiconductor components manufacturers in China, more than 80% of the semiconductor requirements in China is fulfilled by US semiconductor companies, such as Intel and Global Foundries,” said Asif Ghani, Lead Analyst, Hardware & Semiconductor, Technavio Research.

The semiconductor capital spending market in the US is driven by numerous drivers, of which, the most prominent among of all is the accelerated capex in memory and foundry segments. Collectively, memory and foundry represent close to two-third of the total semiconductor capital spending market. With such accelerated capital investments on a global scale, the outcome will have a considerable impact on the semiconductor industry worldwide.

The key vendors in the semiconductor capital spending market in the US include Global Foundries, Intel, Micron, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix. The competition in the semiconductor capital spending market in the US is rigid. And the main reason for such intense completion is the evolution of technology. With the pace of technological advancements in the US market, vendors are involved in substantial capital spending, hence, the market comprises of players with strong technological proficiency.

IC Insights has released its Global Wafer Capacity 2016-2020 report that provides in-depth detail and analysis of IC industry capacity by wafer size, by process geometry, by region, and by product type. The new report provides a ranking of the industry’s 25 largest IC manufacturers in terms of installed capacity as of December 2015.  The top 10 capacity leaders are shown in Figure 1.  Among the world’s top 10 capacity leaders in 2015 were four companies headquartered in North America, two companies based in South Korea and in Taiwan, and one company each from Europe and Japan. The list includes the world’s four largest memory suppliers, three largest foundries, the largest microprocessor supplier, and Texas Instruments and ST—the two biggest suppliers of analog ICs.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Collectively, the top 10 leaders had installed capacity of 11,737K wafers/month at the end of the year, which equates to 72% of global capacity and up slightly from 10,885K wafers/month or 71% in 2014.

  • As of December 2015, Samsung had the most installed wafer capacity with 2.5 million 200mm-equivalent wafers per month, which represented 15.5% of the world’s total capacity with most of it used for the fabrication of DRAM and flash memory devices.
  • Second in line was the largest pure-play foundry in the world TSMC with about 1.9 million wafers per month capacity, or 11.6% of total worldwide capacity.
  • Micron substantially increased its available capacity in recent years primarily through acquiring existing capacity from others. With the addition of the Elpida and Rexchip fabs as well as the extra Inotera capacity, Micron first became the third-largest wafer capacity holder in the world in 2013. Micron had the sixth-largest amount of wafer capacity in 2012, and in the beginning of that year the company acquired Intel’s stake in two IM Flash Technologies fabs, giving Micron access to all the capacity from those fabs.
  • The fourth-largest capacity holder at the end of 2015 was Toshiba with about 1.3 million in monthly wafer capacity (8.2% of total worldwide capacity), including a substantial amount of flash memory capacity for joint-investor/partner SanDisk.
  • Rounding out the top 5 companies was another memory IC supplier SK Hynix with 1.3 million wafers/month (8.1% of total worldwide capacity).
  • Intel’s capacity declined slightly in 2015 because of the company’s Fab 68 in China being taken off-line while it is converted from the production of logic chipsets to next-generation flash memory (3D NAND and XPoint).

Given 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 that an even greater percentage of fab capacity will be in the hands of fewer suppliers through the end of the decade.

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), representing U.S. leadership in semiconductor manufacturing, design, and research, today announced worldwide sales of semiconductors reached $28.9 billion for the month of November 2015, 0.3 percent lower than the previous month’s total of $29.0 billion and 3.0 percent down from the November 2014 total of $29.8 billion. All monthly sales numbers are compiled by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and represent a three-month moving average.

“Softening demand and lingering macroeconomic challenges continued to limit global semiconductor sales in November,” said John Neuffer, president and CEO, Semiconductor Industry Association. “Despite these headwinds, the industry may narrowly surpass total annual sales from 2014 and is projected to post modest sales increases in 2016 and beyond.”

Regionally, month-to-month sales increased in China (1.0 percent), Europe (1.0 percent), and the Americas (0.3 percent), but decreased in Japan (-0.6 percent), and Asia Pacific/All Other (-2.4 percent). Compared to November 2014, sales were up in China (5.3 percent), but down in Asia Pacific/All Other (-4.1 percent), the Americas (-7.1 percent), Europe (-8.0 percent), and Japan (-8.6 percent).

November 2015

Billions

Month-to-Month Sales                               

Market

Last Month

Current Month

% Change

Americas

6.05

6.07

0.3%

Europe

2.91

2.93

1.0%

Japan

2.70

2.68

-0.6%

China

8.59

8.68

1.0%

Asia Pacific/All Other

8.73

8.52

-2.4%

Total

28.97

28.88

-0.3%

Year-to-Year Sales                          

Market

Last Year

Current Month

% Change

Americas

6.53

6.07

-7.1%

Europe

3.19

2.93

-8.0%

Japan

2.93

2.68

-8.6%

China

8.24

8.68

5.3%

Asia Pacific/All Other

8.88

8.52

-4.1%

Total

29.77

28.88

-3.0%

Three-Month-Moving Average Sales

Market

Jun/Jul/Aug

Sept/Oct/Nov

% Change

Americas

5.60

6.07

8.3%

Europe

2.81

2.93

4.5%

Japan

2.67

2.68

0.3%

China

8.23

8.68

5.4%

Asia Pacific/All Other

8.57

8.52

-0.6%

Total

27.88

28.88

3.6%