Posts Tagged ‘Semiconductors’
Monday, August 20th, 2018
Samsung extends its number one ranking and sales lead over Intel to 22%.
IC Insights released its August Update to the 2018 McClean Report earlier this month. This Update included a discussion of the top-25 semiconductor suppliers in 1H18 (the top-15 1H18 semiconductor suppliers are covered in this research bulletin) and Part 1 of an extensive analysis of the IC foundry market and its suppliers.
The top-15 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O-S-D—optoelectronic, sensor, and discrete) sales ranking for 1H18 is shown in Figure 1. It includes seven suppliers headquartered in the U.S., three in Europe, two each in South Korea and Taiwan, and one in Japan. After announcing in early April 2018 that it had successfully moved its headquarters location from Singapore to the U.S. IC Insights now classifies Broadcom as a U.S. company.
 Figure 1 As shown, all but four of the top 15 companies had double-digit year-over-year growth in 1H18. Moreover, seven companies had ≥20% growth, including the five big memory suppliers (Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Toshiba/Toshiba Memory, and Western Digital/SanDisk) as well as Nvidia and ST.
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Tags: boadcom, ICManufacturing, Infineon, McClean Report, MediaTek, NVIDIA, NXP, qualcomm, samsung, Semiconductors, SK Hynix, ST, TI, toshiba, WD/SanDisk
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Tuesday, August 14th, 2018
Mega-mergers become less likely because of the high-dollar value of major acquisitions, increasing scrutiny from regulators, rising protectionism among more countries, and growing global trade frictions.
The demise of Qualcomm’s pending $44 billion purchase of NXP Semiconductors in late July along with growing regulatory reviews of chip merger agreements, efforts by countries to protect domestic technology, and the escalation of global trade friction all suggest semiconductor acquisitions are hitting a ceiling in the size of doable deals. It is becoming less likely that semiconductor acquisitions over $40 billion can be completed or even attempted in the current geopolitical environment and brewing battles over global trade.
IC Insights believes a combination of factors—including the growing high dollar value of major chip merger agreements, complexities in combining large businesses together, and greater scrutiny of governments protecting their domestic base of suppliers—will stifle ever-larger mega-transactions in the semiconductor industry in the foreseeable future. Figure 1 ranks the 10 largest semiconductor merger and acquisition announcements and underscores the growth in size of these M&A transactions. Eight of the 10 largest announcements occurred in the last three years with only the biggest deal (Qualcomm buying NXP) failing to be completed.
Figure 1
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Tags: Altera, ARM, Broadcom, Burr Brown, Freescale, ICManufacturing, intel, Linear Technology, McClean Report, NXP, qualcomm, samsung, SanDisk, Semiconductors, toshiba
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Tuesday, July 31st, 2018
Correlation coefficient expected to reach a very high level of 0.95 in the 2018-2022 timeframe.
In its recently released Mid-Year Update to The McClean Report 2018, IC Insights forecasts that the 2018-2022 global GDP and IC market correlation coefficient will reach 0.95, up from 0.88 in the 2010-2017 time period. IC Insights depicts the increasingly close correlation between worldwide GDP growth and IC market growth through 2017, as well as its forecast through 2022, in Figure 1.
As shown, over the 2010-2017 timeframe, the correlation coefficient between worldwide GDP growth and IC market growth was 0.88, a strong figure given that a perfect correlation is 1.0. In the three decades previous to this timeperiod, the correlation coefficient ranged from a relatively weak 0.63 in the early 2000s to a negative correlation (i.e., essentially no correlation) of -0.10 in the 1990s.
IC Insights believes that the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions, leading to fewer major IC manufacturers and suppliers, is one of major changes in the supply base that illustrate the maturing of the industry that is helping foster a closer correlation between worldwide GDP growth and IC market growth. Other factors include the strong movement to the fab-lite business model and a declining capex as a percent of sales ratio, all trends that are indicative of dramatic changes to the semiconductor industry that are likely to lead to less volatile market cycles over the long term.
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Tags: IC, IC manufacturing, ICManufacturing, McClean Report, Semiconductors, Worldwide GDP
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Wednesday, July 18th, 2018
Semi content to surpass 30% this year, smashing the previous record high set just last year.
In its upcoming Mid-Year Update to The McClean Report 2018 (to be released at the end of July), IC Insights forecasts that the 2018 global electronic systems market will grow 5% to $1,622 billion while the worldwide semiconductor market is expected to surge by 14% this year to $509.1 billion, exceeding the $500.0 billion level for the first time. If the 2018 forecasts come to fruition, the average semiconductor content in an electronic system will reach 31.4%, breaking the all-time record of 28.8% that was set in 2017 (Figure 1).
Figure 1
Historically, the driving force behind the higher average annual growth rate of the semiconductor industry as compared to the electronic systems market is the increasing value or content of semiconductors used in electronic systems. With global unit shipments of cellphones (-1%), automobiles (3%), and PCs (-1%) forecast to be weak in 2018, the disparity between the moderate growth in the electronic systems market and high growth of the semiconductor market is directly due to the increasing content of semiconductors in electronic systems.
While the trend of increasing semiconductor content has been evident for the past 30 years, the big jump in the average semiconductor content in electronic systems in 2018 is expected to be primarily due to the huge surge in DRAM and NAND flash ASPs and average electronic system sales growth this year. After slipping to 30.2% in 2020, the semiconductor content percentage is expected to climb to a new high of 31.5% in 2022. IC Insights does not anticipate the percentage will fall below 30% any year through the forecast period.
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Tags: Electronic system, Forecast, IC manufacturing, ICManufacturing, Semiconductors, technology
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Tuesday, May 22nd, 2018
IC Insights raises its full-year spending growth forecast for this year from 8% to 14%.
IC Insights recently released its May Update to the 2018 McClean Report. This Update included a look at the top-25 1Q18 semiconductor suppliers, a discussion of the 1Q18 IC industry market results, and an update of the 2018 capital spending forecast by company.Overall, the capital spending story for 2018 is becoming much more positive as compared with the forecast presented in IC Insights’ March Update to The McClean Report 2018 (MR18). In the March Update, IC Insights forecast an 8% increase in semiconductor industry capital spending for this year. However, as shown in Figure 1, IC Insights has raised its expectations for 2018 capital spending by six percentage points to a 14% increase. If this increase occurs, it would be the first time that semiconductor industry capital outlays exceeded $100 billion. The worldwide 2018 capital spending forecast figure is 53% higher than the spending just two years earlier in 2016.
Although Samsung says it still does not have a full-year capital spending forecast for this year it did say it will spend “less” in semiconductor capital outlays in 2018 as compared to 2017, when it spent $24.2 billion. However, as of 1Q18, with regard to its capex, its “foot is still on the gas!” Samsung spent $6.72 billion in capex for its semiconductor division in 1Q18, slightly higher than the average of the previous three quarters. This figure is almost 4x the amount the company spent just two years earlier in 1Q16! Over the past four quarters, Samsung has spent an incredible $26.6 billion in capital outlays for its semiconductor group. Wow!
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Tags: China, DRAM, McClean Report, positive, samsung, Semiconductors, SK Hynix, South Korea
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Tuesday, May 15th, 2018
Samsung extends its number one ranking and sales lead over Intel to 23%.
IC Insights will release its May Update to the 2018 McClean Report later this month. This Update includes a discussion of the 1Q18 IC industry market results, an update of the 2018 capital spending forecast by company, and a look at the top-25 1Q18 semiconductor suppliers (the top-15 1Q18 semiconductor suppliers are covered in this research bulletin).
The top-15 worldwide semiconductor (IC and O-S-D—optoelectronic, sensor, and discrete) sales ranking for 1Q18 is shown in Figure 1. It includes eight suppliers headquartered in the U.S., three in Europe, two in South Korea, and one each in Taiwan and Japan. After announcing in early April 2018 that it had successfully moved its headquarters location from Singapore to the U.S. IC Insights now classifies Broadcom as a U.S. company.
The top-15 ranking includes one pure-play foundry (TSMC) and four fabless companies. If TSMC were excluded from the top-15 ranking, Taiwan-based fabless supplier MediaTek ($1,696 million) would have been ranked in the 15th position.
IC Insights includes foundries in the top-15 semiconductor supplier ranking since it has always viewed the ranking as a top supplier list, not a marketshare ranking, and realizes that in some cases the semiconductor sales are double counted. With many of our clients being vendors to the semiconductor industry (supplying equipment, chemicals, gases, etc.), excluding large IC manufacturers like the foundries would leave significant “holes” in the list of top semiconductor suppliers. As shown in the listing, the foundries and fabless companies are identified. In the April Update to The McClean Report, marketshare rankings of IC suppliers by product type were presented and foundries were excluded from these listings.
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Tags: discrete, intel, McClean Report, micron, Optoelectronics, samsung, Semiconductors, sensor, SK Hynix, tsmc
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Tuesday, April 24th, 2018
only eight companies held 88% of global foundry market last year.
Research included in the recently released 50-page April Update to the 2018 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report shows that in 2017, the top eight major foundry leaders (i.e., sales of ≥$1.0 billion) held 88% of the $62.3 billion worldwide foundry market (Figure 1). The 2017 share was the same level as in 2016 and one point higher than the share the top eight foundries represented in 2015. With the barriers to entry (e.g., fab costs, access to leading edge technology, etc.) into the foundry business being so high and rising, IC Insights expects this “major” marketshare figure to remain at or near this elevated level in the future.TSMC, by far, was the leader with $32.2 billion in sales last year. In fact, TSMC’s 2017 sales were over 5x that of second-ranked GlobalFoundries and more than 10x the sales of the fifth-ranked foundry SMIC.
Figure 1
Tags: foundry, Foundry Market, globalfoundaries, huahong group, powerchip, samsung, Semiconductors, smic, tsmc, umc
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Wednesday, April 11th, 2018
Top 25 companies held more than three-fourths of worldwide semiconductor market.
Research included in the April Update to the 2018 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report shows that the world’s leading semiconductor suppliers significantly increased their marketshare over the past decade. The top-5 semiconductor suppliers accounted for 43% of the world’s semiconductor sales in 2017, an increase of 10 percentage points from 10 years earlier (Figure 1). In total, the 2017 top-50 suppliers represented 88% of the total $444.7 billion worldwide semiconductor market last year, up 12 percentage points from the 76% share the top 50 companies held in 2007.
Tags: IC, ICManufacturing, McClean Report, Semiconductors
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Wednesday, March 14th, 2018
Increased expectations for the DRAM and NAND flash markets spur upward revision.
IC Insights’ latest market, unit, and average selling price forecasts for 33 major IC product segments for 2018 through 2022 is included in the March Update to the 2018 McClean Report (MR18). The Update also includes an analysis of the major semiconductor suppliers’ capital spending plans for this year.The biggest adjustments to the original MR18 IC market forecasts were to the memory market; specifically the DRAM and NAND flash segments. The DRAM and NAND flash memory market growth forecasts for 2018 have been adjusted upward to 37% for DRAM (13% shown in MR18) and 17% for NAND flash (10% shown in MR18).
The big increase in the DRAM market forecast for 2018 is primarily due to a much stronger ASP expected for this year than was originally forecast. IC Insights now forecasts that the DRAM ASP will register a 36% jump in 2018 as compared to 2017, when the DRAM ASP surged by an amazing 81%. Moreover, the NAND flash ASP is forecast to increase 10% this year, after jumping by 45% in 2017. In contrast to strong DRAM and NAND flash ASP increases, 2018 unit volume growth for these product segments is expected to be up only 1% and 6%, respectively.
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Tags: DRAM, ICManufacturing, McClean Report, NAND, Semiconductors
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Wednesday, February 21st, 2018
Despite increasing costs of development, IC manufacturers are still making great strides.
The success and proliferation of integrated circuits has largely hinged on the ability of IC manufacturers to continue offering more performance and functionality for the money. Driving down the cost of ICs (on a per-function or per-performance basis) is inescapably tied to a growing arsenal of technologies and wafer-fab manufacturing disciplines as mainstream CMOS processes reach their theoretical, practical, and economic limits. Among the many levers being pulled by IC designers and manufacturers are: feature-size reductions, introduction of new materials and transistor structures, migration to larger-diameter silicon wafers, higher throughput in fab equipment, increased factory automation, three-dimensional integration of circuitry and chips, and advanced IC packaging and holistic system-driven design approaches.
For logic-oriented processes, companies are fabricating leading-edge devices such as high-performance microprocessors, low-power application processors, and other advanced logic devices using the 14nm and 10nm generations (Figure 1). There is more variety than ever among the processes companies offer, making it challenging to compare them in a fair and useful way. Moreover, “plus” or derivative versions of each process generation and half steps between major nodes have become regular occurrences.
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Tags: IC, IC manufacturing, ICManufacturing, roadmap, Semiconductors, technology
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