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Semiconductor industry spending on research and development grew by just 0.5% in 2015, which was the smallest increase since the 2009 downturn year and significantly below the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.0% in R&D expenditures during the last 10 years, according to IC Insights’ new 2016 edition of The McClean Report.  The half-percent increase nudged worldwide R&D spending by semiconductor companies to a new record-high level of $56.4 billion in 2015 from the previous peak of $54.1 billion set in 2014, says IC Insights’ flagship market analysis and forecast report on the IC industry.

Growing concerns about the weak global economy, slumping sales in the second half of the year, and unprecedented industry consolidation through a huge wave of merger and acquisition agreements weighed on semiconductor R&D spending in 2015.  The new 2016 McClean Report shows Intel continuing to lead all semiconductor companies in R&D spending in 2015, accounting for 22% of the industry’s total research and development expenditures.  The top 10 R&D ranking is shown in Figure 1.

Following Intel in the 2015 R&D ranking are Qualcomm, Samsung, Broadcom, and the world’s largest wafer foundry, TSMC.  The top five spenders were unchanged from 2014, but below that point, the rankings of most companies were shuffled.  Micron Technology moved up to sixth in 2015, swapping positions with Toshiba, which fell to seventh in the new ranking.  MediaTek went from ninth in 2014 to eighth place, while SK Hynix climbed from 12th to ninth in 2015.  ST slid from eighth in 2014 to 10th in 2015, and Nvidia fell out of the top 10 to 11th place in 2015.

The top 10 in the R&D ranking collectively increased spending on research and development in 2015 by about 2% compared to the half-percent increase for total semiconductor R&D expenditures in the year.  Combined R&D spending by the top 10 exceeded total expenditures by the rest of the semiconductor companies (about $30.8 billion versus $25.6 billion) in 2015—something that has continued to hold true since 2005 and probably well before that, according to The 2016 McClean Report, which becomes available in January 2016.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Additional details on semiconductor R&D spending and other technology trends within the IC industry are provided within the IC industry are provided in The McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry (released in January 2016).

UK-based chipmaker Dialog Semiconductor plc’s board of directors has determined not to revise its proposal to acquire US-based microcontroller and touch solutions specialist Atmel Corp., the company said.

On 13 January 2016, Atmel published that it had determined that the unsolicited acquisition proposal received from Microchip Technology Inc. constitutes a “company Superior Proposal” and that it intends to terminate its merger agreement with Dialog to accept Microchip’s proposal. Dialog will inform Atmel that it will waive the remainder of the four business day notice period to which Dialog is entitled under its merger agreement with Atmel.

Upon termination of the merger agreement by Atmel to accept Microchip’s proposal, Atmel is required to pay Dialog a $137.3M termination fee.

Dialog provides highly integrated standard and custom mixed-signal integrated circuits, optimised for smartphone, tablet, IoT, LED Solid State Lighting and Smart Home applications.

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.

The mobile sector is driving production and market growth; however a new market driver, IoT is on the horizon and is expected to have a significant impact on the advanced packaging industry.

“IoT driven semiconductor industry consolidation, is reflecting into a highly dynamic advanced packaging landscape,” commented Andrej Ivankovic, Technology & Market Analyst, Advanced Packaging & Semiconductor Manufacturing at Yole Développement.

And he added: “Numerous packaging options developed by the industry leaders, are being explored as new IoT applications arise.”

In parallel, Yole Développement’ analysts highlight the noteworthy demand for advanced packaging solutions and the increasing number of shipped wafers: focus is turning to integration and wafer level packages to enable a functionality driven roadmap and revive the cost/performance curve.

ap platforms

Yole Développement (Yole), the “More than Moore” market research and strategy consulting reinforces its market positioning within the advanced packaging area with the release of its first report “Status of the Advanced Packaging Industry”. This first edition brings a thorough analysis including dynamics and disruptions of the market, market forecasts per packaging platform and device type from 2014 to 2020, market shares…This analysis also presents a detailed analysis of the advanced packaging supply chain, financial evolutions and mergers & acquisitions. Yole’s advanced packaging team proposes a packaging technology segmentation and highlights with this new analysis, the impact of Internet of Things and the adoption of 2.5D/3D, Fan-Out and Fan-In solutions.

“A transformation of the semiconductor industry is under way,” said Andrej Ivankovic, Yole. “Advanced packaging is part of the scaling and functionality roadmaps.”

The latest events in the technology market indicate that 2015 marks the beginning of an exciting new era for the IT and electronics industry. At semiconductor supply chain level, the industry entered a profound consolidation phase with high M&A activity reshaping the business landscape. FEOL device scaling and related cost reduction are deviating from the path they followed for the past few decades, with Moore’s law in its foundation. Advanced nodes do not bring the desired cost benefit anymore and R&D investments in new lithography solutions and devices below 10nm nodes are rising substantially.

As the smartphone market matures, new forces are appearing in the form of IoT. While the mobile sector continues to drive the market, the scent of IoT is already spreading in the consumer sector with products such as wearables and first smart home appliances. IoT market, application and technology segmentation has begun. Companies across the industry are restructuring, merging and acquiring in order to adjust their portfolio, enable a complete platform offer and establish leading positions on the market.

Yole’s advanced packaging analysts also identified other market dynamics. They announced:
•   The foundry involvement is no longer a dent in advanced packaging production.
•   Increased activity of Chinese capital on the market.
•   And more

At the level of technology, as profitability of FEOL scaling options remains uncertain and IoT promises application diversification, the spotlight is now turning to advanced packages for cost reduction, performance boost and functional integration.

In order to answer market demands, the advanced packaging segment focuses on integration and WLP. Emerging packages such as Fan-Out WLP, 2.5D/3D IC and related System-in-Package solutions aim to bridge the gap and revive the cost/performance curve.

How will the advanced packaging industry evolve, which changes in the semiconductor supply chain are taking place and which packaging technologies will be most critical in the years to come? Yole proposes with this new technology and market analysis, a deep understanding of the advanced packaging technical and market challenges. Under this new report, the market research and strategy consulting company brings a thorough analysis of the advanced packaging industry and its future development covering platforms Fan-Out WLP, Fan-In WLP, Flip Chip and 2.5D / 3D.

Worldwide semiconductor capital spending is projected to decline 4.7 percent in 2016, to $59.4 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. (Table 1). This is down from the 3.3 percent growth predicted in Gartner’s previous quarter’s forecast.

“The 2016 outlook for the semiconductor manufacturing equipment market reflects a bleaker outlook for end-user electronics demand and the world economic environment,” said David Christensen, senior research analyst at Gartner. “Capital investment policies of leading semiconductor vendors have remained cautious against the background of sluggish electronics demand. However, the long-term outlook shows a return to growth, although the wafer-level manufacturing equipment market is expected to enter a gentle down cycle in 2016 due to the loss of the supply and demand balance in the DRAM market.”

Table 1

Worldwide Semiconductor Capital Spending and Equipment Spending Forecast, 2014-2018 (Millions of Dollars) 

 

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

Semiconductor Capital Spending ($M)

64,569.5

62,291.3

59,360.8

63,622.1

69,182.0

Growth (%)

11.6

-3.5

-4.7

7.2

8.7

Wafer-Level Manufacturing Equipment ($M)

33,684.1

33,713.2

32,903.2

35,699.0

39,129.1

Growth (%)

16.2

0.1

-2.4

8.5

9.6

Wafer Fab Equipment ($M)

31,953.0

31,906.5

31,097.6

33,630.3

36,689.8

Growth (%)

16.3

-0.1

-2.5

8.1

9.1

Wafer-Level Packaging and Assembly Equipment ($M)

1,731.1

1,806.7

1,805.6

2,068.7

2,439.2

Growth (%)

14.3

4.4

-0.1

14.6

17.9

Source: Gartner (January 2016)

2016 spending on wafer-level manufacturing equipment is forecast to decline 2.4 percent. Within the forecast, different segments are expected to fare differently in response to varying end-market conditions. For example, the lithography segment will grow 1.4 percent, while the etch, clean and planarization equipment markets in 2016 are expected to decline by 2.9 percent. The deposition equipment segment will improve slightly in 2016 with negative 3.2 percent growth. Beyond 2016, the market turns positive, with relatively strong growth forecast through 2018.

This research is produced by Gartner’s Semiconductor Manufacturing program. This research program, which is part of the overall semiconductor research group, provides a comprehensive view of the entire semiconductor industry, from manufacturing to device and application market trends. Additional analysis on the outlook for the semiconductor market can be found at “Forecast Analysis: Semiconductor Capital Spending and Manufacturing Equipment, Worldwide, 4Q15.”

Viewpoints: 2016 outlook


January 11, 2016

Each year, Solid State Technology turns to industry leaders to hear viewpoints on the technological and economic outlook for the upcoming year. Read through these expert opinions on what to expect in 2016.

New technologies will fuel pockets of growth in 2016

Plisinski_headshotBy Mike Plisinski, Chief Executive Officer, Rudolph Technologies, Inc.

While the 2016 outlook for the semiconductor industry as a whole appears increasingly uncertain, there are areas where significant growth remains likely. In particular, advanced packaging, driven by growing consumer demand in applications ranging from smartphones and tablets to the Internet of Things (IoT), shows great promise for continued innovation.

First, we see outsourced assembly and test (OSAT) manufacturers driving the development of new packaging technology. For example, we’ve seen major gains in the adoption of fan-out packaging and copper pillar technology, evidenced by ongoing capacity expansion, and the addition of new players—the most obvious perhaps being the large ongoing investment by a leading foundry in Asia where our inspection equipment has received a prominent role. We see more and more manufacturers choosing to add yield management and/or advanced process control (APC) software, to obtain a competitive advantage in not only cost, but also reliability. This is achieved by transforming ultra-large data sets into useful information used for predictive analytics (reducing costs) and analysis across the supply chain (improving reliability).

The growth in advanced packaging is also driving the adoption of sophisticated lithography techniques for these new technologies. Our JetStep advanced packaging stepper is now in high-volume manufacturing use at several top OSATs. The system allows our customers the flexibility to handle all of the current advanced processes within a single tool, which provides a compelling cost of ownership value. We also see emerging processes, such the adoption of rectangular panel substrates, in some packaging applications, certainly in fan-out, but also embedded and other packaging technologies. Rectangular panels promise significant gains in economy-of-scale and processing efficiency.

Lastly, expansion in radio frequency (RF) device capability continues to grow, with the increasing number of devices that communicate wirelessly and the increasing number of frequencies with which they communicate. Measuring the electrode and piezo layers of SAW/BAW filters will only grow as more and more filters are required in mobile devices. Beyond mobile, the expansion in RF is also driven by WiFi, Bluetooth and IoT requirements for connectivity, so we expect it to accelerate even as the smartphone growth curve flattens.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Worldwide semiconductor revenue totaled $333.7 billion in 2015, a 1.9 percent decrease from 2014 revenue of $340.3 billion, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc. The top 25 semiconductor vendors’ combined revenue increased 0.2 percent, which was more than the overall industry’s growth. The top 25 vendors accounted for 73.2 percent of total market revenue, up from 71.7 percent in 2014.

“Weakened demand for key electronic equipment, the continuing impact of the strong dollar in some regions and elevated inventory are to blame for the decline in the market in 2015,” said Sergis Mushell, research director at Gartner. “In contrast to 2014, which saw revenue growth in all key device categories, 2015 saw mixed performance with optoelectronics, nonoptical sensors, analog and ASIC all reporting revenue growth while the rest of the market saw declines. Strongest growth was from the ASIC segment with growth of 2.4 percent due to demand from Apple, followed by analog and nonoptical sensors with 1.9 percent and 1.6 percent growth, respectively. Memory, the most volatile segment of the semiconductor industry, saw revenue decline by 0.6 percent, with DRAM experiencing negative growth and NAND flash experiencing growth.”

Intel recorded a 1.2 percent revenue decline, due to falls in PC shipments (see Table 1). However, it retained the No. 1 market share position for the 24th year in a row with 15.5 percent market share. Samsung’s memory business helped drive growth of 11.8 percent in 2015, and the company maintained the No. 2 spot with 11.6 percent market share.

Table 1. Top 10 Semiconductor Vendors by Revenue, Worldwide, 2015 (Millions of Dollars)

Rank 2014

Rank 2015

Vendor

2014 Revenue 

2015 Estimated Revenue 

2014-2015 Growth (%)

2015 Market Share (%)

1

1

Intel

52,331

51,709

-1.2

15.5

2

2

Samsung Electronics

34,742

38,855

11.8

11.6

5

3

SK Hynix

15,997

16,494

3.1

4.9

3

4

Qualcomm

19,291

15,936

-17.4

4.8

4

5

Micron Technology

16,278

14,448

-11.2

4.3

6

6

Texas Instruments

11,538

11,533

0.0

3.5

7

7

Toshiba

10,665

9,622

-9.8

2.9

8

8

Broadcom

8,428

8,419

-0.1

2.5

9

9

STMicroelectronics

7,376

6,890

-6.6

2.1

12

10

Infineon Technologies

5,693

6,630

16.5

2.0

Others

157,992

153,182

-3.0

41.2

Total

340,331

333,718

-1.9

100

Source: Gartner (January 2016)

“The rise of the U.S. dollar against a number of different currencies significantly impacted the total semiconductor market in 2015,” said Mr. Mushell. “End equipment demand was weakened in regions where the local currency depreciated against the dollar. For example in the eurozone, the sales prices of mobile phones or PCs increased in local currency, as many of the components are priced in U.S. dollars. This resulted in buyers either delaying purchases or buying cheaper substitute products, resulting in lower semiconductor sales. Additionally, Gartner’s semiconductor revenue statistics are based on U.S. dollars; thus, sharp depreciation of the Japanese yen shrinks the revenue and the market share of the Japanese semiconductor vendors when measured in U.S. dollars.”

The NAND market continued to deteriorate throughout the year. As a result, revenue grew only 4.1 percent in 2015, fueled by elevated supply bit growth that resulted in an aggressive pricing environment. The tumultuous NAND pricing environment rippled through most of the NAND solutions, particularly solid-state drives (SSDs), which continue to encroach on hard-disk drives (HDDs). The ensuing price war in SSDs further pressured the profitability of the NAND flash makers amid the biggest technology transition in flash history — 3D NAND. While 3D NAND commercialization was modest, it was limited to only one vendor — Samsung. Modest revenue gains have not stopped investment in NAND flash and 3D technology, with all vendors continuing to spend aggressively in the technology and most with new fabs.

After 32.0 percent revenue growth in 2014, the DRAM market hit a downturn in 2015. An oversupply in the commodity portion of the market caused by weak PC demand led to severe declines in average selling prices (ASPs), and revenue contracted by 2.4 percent compared with 2014. The oversupply and the extent of ASP declines could have been significantly worse if Micron Technologies’ bit growth had performed in line with its South Korean rivals. Fortunately for the market, the company saw negative bit growth due to its transition to 20 nm, sparing the industry from an even more severe downturn.

Additional information is provided in the Gartner report “Market Share Analysis: Semiconductors, Worldwide, Preliminary 2015 Estimates.”

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.

By Denny McGuirk, SEMI president and CEO

“In like a lion, out like a lamb” is just half the story for 2015.  While initial expectations forecasted a double-digit growth year, the world economy faded and dragged our industry down to nearly flat 2015/2014 results.

However, 2015 will be remembered for a wild ride that fundamentally changed the industry.  In 2015 a wave of M&A activity swept across the industry supply chain — unlike any single year before — with scores of transactions and notable multi-billion dollar companies being absorbed.  In 2016, we all will be working within a newly reconfigured supply chain.

Increasingly, in this business landscape, collaboration is required simultaneously across the extended supply chain — customers’ customers’ customers are now routinely part of the discussion in even unit process development.  Facilitating interaction and collaboration across the extended supply chain is part of what SEMI does and I’ll be updating you in next week’s letter on how, but first, let’s review what’s happened and what’s happening.

2015 Down 1%: “In Like a Lion, Out Like a Lamb”

2015 had an optimistic start with a strong outlook and good pace in Q1 and 1H.  In January 2015 forecasters projected semiconductor equipment and materials growing in a range of 7 percent to nearly 14 percent vs. 2014.  Global GDP, as late as May 2015, was pegged at 3.5 percent for 2015 after coming in at only 3.4 percent in 2014.  In August, estimates dropped to 3.3 percent, in November estimates dropped further to 3.1 percent for the year.

As our industry has matured, semiconductor equipment and materials growth rates are ever more tightly correlated to shifts in global GDP.  With global GDP unexpectedly dropping, the second half saw declining book-to-bill activity and the year will likely end flat or slightly negative for 2015.  Though nearly flat, the numbers are still impressive with a healthy $37.3 billion annual revenue for semiconductor manufacturing equipment and $43.6 billion for semiconductor materials.

An important change is since the 2009 financial crisis, electronics, chips, and semiconductor equipment and materials markets have been much more stable year-to-year than in the years prior to 2009.  Also, the movement of the three segments is much more synchronized compared to the earlier years of boom and bust. For SEMI’s members this means cycles are becoming more muted — enabling members to shift business models accordingly to better maintain prosperity.

Fab-Equipmt-600w Capital-Equip-600w

 

2015’s $125+ Billion M&A:  Inflection Point for Silicon Valley Icons and Global Titans

2015 is a year that will be viewed as an inflection point in our industry.  The unprecedented M&A volume (more than $125 billion for semiconductor related companies) and the size of individual deals through the electronics supply chain will forever  change the industry.

historic-proportions

While there have been waves of consolidation for semiconductor Integrated Device Manufacturers (IDMs) in the 1980s and 1990s, and semiconductor equipment and materials in the 1990s and 2000s, the fabless semiconductor companies are the latest wave undergoing consolidation.  Although, in 2015, not just fabless, but all segments saw major deals — even iconic chemical brands DuPont and Dow Chemical announced their intention to merge.

Large and familiar brands like Broadcom (Avago), SanDisk (Western Digital), Altera (Intel), Freescale (NXP), and KLA-Tencor (Lam Research) have been merged and will continue forward as part of their acquirers.  China is on the move with its ambitions to quickly grow its indigenous semiconductor supply chain with recent acquisitions of ISSI, OmniVision, NXP RF power unit, and notably Mattson in the semiconductor equipment segment.

In an age when new fab costs are pushing double-digit billions of dollars and leading-edge device tapeouts are surpassing $300 million per part, consolidation is a strategy to increase scale, leverage R&D, and compete better.  For SEMI’s members, the winner-take-all stakes increase and raise expectations for technology, product performance, application development, speed, and support.  This, in turn, means that SEMI members have an increased need for a newly drawn pre-competitive collaboration model along the extended electronics supply chain and for Special Interest Groups (SIGs) to drive collective action in focused sub-segments and for specific issues.

Collaboration-is-critical-6

Source: SEMI (www.semi.org), 2015

2016 Up ~1%: Stay Close to your Customer and your Customer’s Customer and …

Current projections for semiconductor equipment and materials suggest that 2016 will not be a high growth year.  The span of forecasts ranges from almost -10 percent to +5 percent.  At SEMI’s Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS), 10-13 January, we will be taking a deep-dive into the 2016 forecast and on the business drivers and will have a much better picture of the consensus outlook.

However, it is already quite clear that following this enormous wave of consolidation, the industry will look different and will offer new and different opportunities.  Listening to SEMI’s members, I’ve heard that during this period of upheaval it’s absolutely critical to stay close to one’s customers – but more than that – to have access and ongoing direct dialogue with the customer’s customer … and customers’ customers’ customers.

In light of the cost of research and development, the magnitude of risks, and the speed of new consumer electronics adoption, SEMI members find that they need to intimately know emerging requirements two to three steps away in the supply chain, and may require rapid and innovative development from their own sub-suppliers to meet product delivery in time.  In parallel, we see system integrators (electronics providers) staffing up with semiconductor processing engineers and equipment expertise, both for differentiation of their own products and for potential strategic vertical manufacturing.

2016 will mark an acceleration of collaboration and interdependence across the extended supply chain.  Next week, I’ll provide an update letter on SEMI’s related activities with an overview of what SEMI is doing to meet the realities of a reshaped industry.  SEMI’s role is evolving, and more important now than ever, in helping the industry achieve together, what it cannot accomplish alone.

SEMI-Infographic--Achieving

Learn more about SEMI membership and upcoming events.

LG is showcasing a handful of futuristic concepts at CES 2016 this week, including an 18 inch prototype of an OLED display that can roll up like a newspaper.

Source: LG

Source: LG

The display has a high-definition resolution of 1200×810 with almost one million mega-pixels and can be rolled up to a radius of 3cm without affecting the function.

OLED screens are composed of LEDs that emit their own light from the lit pixels, conversely to older LCD technology which relies on a backlight to illuminate the display. Many phones such as those produced by Samsung already use OLED panels, but they have so far been entirely inflexible.

LG’s new technology paves the way for smaller electronic devices that can bend – like phones – but LG claims it can be scaled up to the size of a 50 inch television.

The company said the new screens were mounted on a “high molecular substance-based polyimide film” that served as the back plate for the rollable panel. The polyimide film reduces the thickness of the panel which helps to “significantly improve” its flexibility.

The screen is currently just a prototype and can only be rolled up in one direction. It is also quite delicate and can be damaged easily resulting in dead pixels appearing on the display.

LG Display’s KJ Kim said that in the future consumers will be able to roll up their television sets when not in use, although he gave no release date for the new technology.

The display was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas along with a number of other exhibitors such as Samsung who have demonstrated a smart fridge and a television that can act as a wireless hub for the Internet of Things.

Gary Shapiro, one of the organizers of CES, said: “We are in the middle of a revolutionary wave of innovation where game-changing ideas are springing up from small companies and entrepreneurs all over the world.”