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).
