At this week's SEMICON West trade show in San Francisco, industry association SEMI and market research company Strategic Marketing Associates (SMA) each announced their forecasts for the chip equipment industry.
While SMA and SEMI have different forecasts for 2007, both agree that the industry will grow to at least $40 billion by 2008.
According to SMA’s FabFutures Report, the industry will experience 19 percent growth this year, followed by 10 percent growth next year, reaching $40 billion.
“We see the industry bringing 35 news fabs online by end of 2007 with a total equivalent capacity, when fully ramped, of more than 2 million 200mm diameter wafers per month. Representing more than 15 acres of silicon, this monthly output is roughly equal to 18 percent of industry’s theoretical full capacity today,” noted SMA President George Burns.
SEMI’s Mid-Year Consensus Forecast pegs growth at 18 percent for 2006, flat for 2007, then growing to surpass $44.1 billion in 2008.
“Favorable economic conditions, increased demand for semiconductor devices and stable inventory levels have stimulated capital investment by the world’s chip makers in the first half of the year,” said SEMI President and CEO Stanley T. Myers. “SEMI members anticipate strong sales of chip manufacturing equipment in 2006. Furthermore, they anticipate less dramatic fluctuations in future cycles consistent with end-market growth and long term diversification trends in consumer electronics.”
SMA’s FabFutures Report says that most of the new capacity and spending will be for processing 300mm diameter wafers, especially to meet demand for DRAM and Flash memory. Led by the Toshiba-SanDisk joint venture (Flash Partners) and Samsung, Nanya and Inotera, as well as Micron and its joint venture IM Flash, as many as 14 memory fabs will come online in 2007. Fully two-thirds of all capacity coming online then will be for memory.
The FabFutures Report also shows the U.S. as the largest investor in new fab construction worldwide since 1995. This year, the U.S. will account for 30 percent of the worldwide total, with Japan and South Korea tied for second place at 19 percent.