In 2021, five of the top 10 semiconductor companies were fabless suppliers.  In 2008, there was one fabless company in the ranking; in 2000, there were none.

IC Insights’ 2Q Update to The McClean Report 2022 will be released in May. It presents an analysis of the marketshare of the major semiconductor suppliers excluding the pure-play foundries (Figure 1).  While there is a small amount of double-counting effect due to the IDM foundry revenue included in the figures, it is not large enough to significantly alter the trend discussed below.

(more…)

Even with more fabs, strong unit growth will keep industry capacity utilization at 93.0% in 2022.

IC Insights’ February 1Q Update to The McClean Report 2022 includes an overview of IC industry capacity and wafer start trends from 2002 through 2026.  This bulletin provides a brief summary.

The volatile nature of the IC industry is reflected by large swings in annual wafer starts.  Over the past five years, for example, annual wafer start growth rates have ranged from -4.7% in 2019 to 19.0% growth in 2021.  The industry’s installed wafer capacity also fluctuates according to market conditions, but the changes are not usually as dramatic as they are for wafer starts. The annual wafer capacity growth rates over the past five years have ranged from 4.0% in 2016 to 8.5% in 2021 (Figure 1).

(more…)

Unit growth returns to the long-term growth rate after an enormous 22% surge in 2021.

IC Insights’ May 2Q Update to The McClean Report 2022 will be released next month.  In the 2Q Update, IC Insights forecasts worldwide IC unit shipments will increase 9.2% this year to 427.7 billion units and resume tracking with the long-term IC unit compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.4%. The 9.2% gain anticipated this year follows the large, 22% increase experienced during the economic recovery of 2021—the largest increase in IC unit growth since the boom year of 2010.

(more…)

U.S. companies captured 54% of the total worldwide IC market in 2021, propelled by a 47% share of IDM sales and a 68% share of fabless sales.

Regional marketshares of IDMs (companies with wafer fabs), fabless companies, and total IC sales were led by U.S. headquartered companies in 2021, according to the 2Q Update to The McClean Report 2022 that will be released in May.

Figure 1 shows the 2021 IDM and fabless company shares of IC sales as well as the total worldwide share of the IC market by company headquarters location (pure-play foundries are excluded from this data).

Figure 1

(more…)