Hardest hit are ≤200mm wafer fabs, 70% of closures in Japan and North America.

Over the past decade, the IC industry has been paring down its older capacity as manufacturers have consolidated or transitioned to the fab-lite or fabless business models.  In its recently released Global Wafer Capacity 2020-2024 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 using sub-20nm process technology, suppliers have eliminated inefficient wafer fabs. Since 2009, semiconductor manufacturers around the world have closed or repurposed 100 wafer fabs, according to findings in the new report.

Figure 1 shows the number of fabs closed by geographic region while Figure 2 shows a distribution of those fabs by wafer size and year.

Figure 1

(more…)

Propelled by 51% share of IDM sales and 65% share of fabless sales, U.S. companies captured 55% of the total worldwide IC market in 2019.

Regional marketshares of IDMs (companies operating wafer fabs), fabless companies, and total IC sales were led by U.S. headquartered companies in 2019, according to data presented in the recently released March Update to The McClean Report 2020.

Figure 1 shows U.S. companies held 55% of the total worldwide IC market in 2019 followed by the South Korean companies with a 21% share, down six percentage points from 2018.  Taiwanese companies, on the strength of their fabless company IC sales, held 6% of total IC sales, one point less than the European companies.

Figure 1

South Korean and Japanese companies have an extremely weak presence in the fabless IC segment and the Taiwanese and Chinese companies have a noticeably low share of the IDM portion of the IC market. Overall, U.S.-headquartered companies showed the most balance with regard to IDM, fabless, and total IC industry marketshare.
(more…)

“Black Swan” is a commonly used phrase in the world of finance to describe an event that is unexpected and unknowable.  The recent surge of the spread of the coronavirus (Covid-19) and its anticipated negative impact on the global economy and IC market definitely fits the definition of a Black Swan event. Such events typically cause a great deal of uncertainty and that is certainly the case today.

Over a decade ago, Jeff Immelt, then-CEO of General Electric, coined the term “reset economy.”  He used this phrase to describe what he expected to be a very different world following the financial meltdown and ensuing global economic crisis of 2008-2009.

Fast forward to 2020. IC Insights believes that this “reset” philosophy can be applied to the global IC industry this year following the current worldwide disruption to trade and business and the expected subsequent slowdown of the global economy due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

After enduring a steep market decline in 2019, most believed the IC industry was poised for a reasonably robust recovery in 2020.  In fact, January 2020 global IC sales were up a solid 79% from one year earlier in January 2019.  IC Insights had originally forecast an 8% increase for the 2020 IC market in its McClean Report 2020 that was released this past January.

(more…)