Notably, the IC market has never shown more than three sequential quarters of decline.
IC Insights will release its May Update to the 2019 McClean Report later this month. This Update includes a discussion of the 1Q19 IC industry market results, a detailed quarterly IC market forecast for the remainder of this year, and a look at the top-25 1Q19 semiconductor suppliers.
Over its 60-year history, the IC industry is well known for its cyclical behavior. Looking back to the mid-1970s, IC Insights cannot identify a period where the IC market declined for more than three quarters in a row. Assuming the 2Q19 IC market registers a slight decline of 1% as compared to 1Q19, the 4Q18-2Q19 timeperiod would mark the sixth three-quarter IC market drop on record (Figure 1).
Figure 1
