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IC Insights

Archive for March, 2019

U.S. Companies Continue to Represent Largest Share of Fabless IC Sales

Tuesday, March 26th, 2019

Chinese companies log fastest growth since 2010 and now hold a 13% share of fabless IC sales.

IC Insights published its updated 2019-2023 semiconductor market forecasts and top-40 IDM and top-50 fabless IC company sales rankings in its recently released March Update, the first monthly Update to the 500-page, 2019 edition of The McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry.

Figure 1 depicts the 2018 fabless company share of IC sales by company headquarters location. With 68%, the U.S. companies continued to hold the dominant share of fabless IC sales last year, just one percentage point less than in 2010.

2018 Fabless Company IC sales by company HQ location

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Tags: tsmc
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Intel Expected to Recapture #1 Semi Supplier Ranking in 2019

Thursday, March 7th, 2019

Steep memory market plunge likely to push Samsung’s 2019 semiconductor sales down by 20%.

IC Insights is currently updating its 2019-2023 semiconductor market forecasts that will be presented later this month in the March Update, the first monthly Update to the 500-page, 2019 edition of The McClean Report—A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry (released in January 2019).

For 2019, a steep 24% drop in the memory market is forecast to pull the total semiconductor market down by 7%. With 83% of Samsung’s semiconductor sales being memory devices last year, the memory market downturn is expected to drag the company’s total semiconductor sales down by 20% this year. Although Intel’s semiconductor sales are forecast to be relatively flat in 2019, the company is poised to regain the number 1 semiconductor supplier ranking this year (Figure 1), a position it held from 1993 through 2016.

Figure 1

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Tags: ICManufacturing, intel, McClean Report, micron, NXP, powerchip, qualcomm, samsung, TI, toshiba, tsmc
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97 IC Wafer Fabs Closed or Repurposed During Past 10 Years

Friday, March 1st, 2019

90% of closures were ≤200mm wafer fabs; greatest number of closures in Japan.

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. In its recently released Global Wafer Capacity 2019-2023 report, IC Insights shows that due to the surge of merger and acquisition activity in the middle of this decade and with more companies producing IC devices on sub-20nm process technology, suppliers are eliminating inefficient wafer fabs. Over the past ten years (2009-2018), semiconductor manufacturers around the world have closed or repurposed 97 wafer fabs, according to findings in the new report.

Figure 1 shows that since 2009, 42 150mm wafer fabs and 24 200mm wafer fabs have been shuttered. 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.