The total MPU market is on track to exceed $100 billion for the first time ever this year, thanks to strong increases in cellphone application processor revenues, says Mid-Year Update.

Microprocessor sales are maintaining strength in 2021 after climbing 16% last year in the midst of the global Covid-19 virus health crisis that drove up the world’s reliance on the Internet during the pandemic. IC Insights’ recently released Mid-Year Update to The McClean Report 2021 now projects MPU sales to increase 14% in 2021, which will lift the total microprocessor market to a record-high $103.7 billion, compared to a 9% increase that was expected in January.

The Mid-Year Update raises the projection of MPU unit growth to 11% this year.  With MPU shipments reaching 2.5 billion units and the average selling price (ASP) expected to rise 4% in 2021, annual microprocessors sales are forecast to exceed $100.0 billion for the first time ever this year (Figure 1).

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Top-10 semiconductor suppliers post 10% jump in 2Q21/1Q21 sales.

IC Insights released its August Update to the 2021 McClean Report this month, which includes a review of the top-25 semiconductor sales leaders for 2Q21. The top-10 suppliers for 2Q are covered in this research bulletin.

Semiconductor sales include ICs and optoelectronics, sensors, and discretes (O-S-Ds).  The top-10 semiconductor sales leaders for 2Q21 are shown in Figure 1. The list includes six suppliers headquartered in the U.S., two in South Korea, and two in Taiwan and consists of four fabless companies (Qualcomm, Nvidia, Broadcom, and MediaTek) and one pure-play foundry (TSMC). (more…)

Special Purpose Logic, DRAM, Cellphone MPUs, and Display Drivers forecast to lead industry-wide upturn as demand extends into the second half of the year.

IC Insights recently released its Mid-Year Update to The McClean Report 2021.  The update includes IC Insights’ ranking of revenue growth rates for the 33 IC product categories defined by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization and confirms that vigorous end-use demand is affecting market growth across all product segments.

Figure 1 shows the distribution of growth rates for the 33 IC product categories in 2020 and IC Insights’ forecast for 2021. IC Insights expects 32 of the 33 product categories to experience sales growth this year with 29 product categories expected to see double-digit growth, representing one of the strongest and broadest sales industry outlooks that IC Insights has ever documented.  In previous strong-growth years, perhaps a handful of IC products had extraordinary sales gains that helped raise overall IC market growth.  But, in 2021, it appears that robust growth has permeated nearly all product categories across the entire IC industry.  Only the fading and insignificant gate array market (forecast sales of $58 million in 2021) is expected to decline in sales.

Figure 1

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