More than one quarter of installed wafer capacity worldwide is dedicated to producing IC devices using process geometries (or feature sizes) smaller than 40nm, according to data in IC Insights’ Global Wafer Capacity 2013—A Detailed Analysis and Forecast of the IC Industry’s Wafer Fab Capacity.

Next month, IC Insights’ April Update to The 2013 McClean Report will show a ranking of the 2012 top-50 semiconductor suppliers; a preview of the top-25 companies is listed in Figure 1. The top 25 worldwide semiconductor (ICs and O S Ds—optoelectronics, discretes, and sensors) sales leaders for 2012 include 10 suppliers headquartered in the U.S., seven in Japan, three in Taiwan, three in Europe, and two in South Korea, a relatively broad repr...

Samsung Electronics catapulted to the top of the optoelectronics supplier ranking in 2012 from 12th place in 2011 after it gained full ownership of Samsung LED, a 50-50 joint venture in light-emitting diodes that was created in 2009 between Samsung Electronics and affiliate Samsung Electro-Mechanics. In April 2012, the venture was absorbed into Samsung Electronics to strengthen and expand the use of high-brightness LEDs in displays, LCD TVs, and ...

IC Insights’ soon-to-be-released March Update to The 2013 McClean Report lists the forecasted 2013 top-25 semiconductor capital spenders with a preview of the top-10 spenders listed in Figure 1. As shown, there are five companies that are expected to spend at least $3.0 billion in 2013, the same as in 2012 and 2011.

Industry consolidation to just three big DRAM suppliers and a reduction in capital expenditures among these manufacturers helped propel DRAM average selling prices up 13% year over year in January, which contributed to a 19.9% jump in the total memory market and a 6.2% increase for the total IC market in January 2013. The strengthening memory segment also helped boost year-over-year semiconductor sales by 6.2%.

New automotive technologies that go beyond touchscreens, satellite radio, and voice-activated GPS commands are being tested and improved, and will soon begin to appear in many more new car models, resulting in solid growth for the automotive IC market through 2016, according to the 2013 edition of IC Insights’ IC Market Drivers—A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits.

It is a fact that semiconductor industry capital spending is becoming more concentrated with a greater percentage of spending coming from a shrinking number of companies. As a result, IC industry capacity is also becoming more concentrated and this trend is especially prevalent in 300mm wafer technology.

Spending on research and development by semiconductor companies grew 7% in 2012 to a record-high $53.0 billion, even though the semiconductor market declined 1% to $317.6 billion, according to the 2013 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report. The increase lifted R&D spending by chip companies to 16.7% of total semiconductor sales in 2012, the highest level since the peak of 17.5% was reached in both 2008 and 2009.

China’s IC market is forecast to continue growing at a strong rate through 2017—faster than the growth rate of the worldwide IC market—according to IC Insights’ latest forecast contained in the pages of The 2013 McClean Report. The Chinese IC market is forecast to have a 2012-2017 compound annual growth rate of 13%, five points higher than the 8% CAGR forecast for the total IC market during this same time period.

Driven by continued demand for smartphones, tablet PCs, and other personal media devices, the total flash memory market (NAND and NOR) is forecast to grow 2% to $30.4 billion in 2012, surpassing the $28.0 billion DRAM market in sales for the first time. With the exception of 2010, the DRAM and flash memory markets have been growing closer in size to each other for several years but demand for flash used in portable media devices, coupled with two...

It took digital cameras less than 10 years to virtually eliminate film photography from the consumer market in the last decade. Almost as quickly, camera-equipped cellphones have played a major role in ending the meteoric rise of stand-alone digital cameras. For most consumers, camera phones have become more than adequate for taking photographs and capturing video clips.

For most of the last two decades personal computers have accounted for a third or more of annual IC sales, but standard PCs are now on the brink of being replaced as the largest end-use product category for integrated circuits, according to IC Insights’ new 485-page 2013 edition of IC Market Drivers—A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits. With cellphones and tablet computers racking up strong...

IC Insights will release its 2013 edition of IC Market Drivers—A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits this November. The study examines several key electronic system applications and their impact on the IC market.

IC Insights will release its 2013 edition of IC Market Drivers—A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits this November. The study examines several key system applications including the market for digital televisions and its impact on the IC market.

A forecasted ranking and discussion of the 2012 top semiconductor suppliers will be included as part of IC Insights' upcoming November Update to The McClean Report. Also included in the November Update will be a listing of the top semiconductor industry capital spenders and a description of a “new” IC industry cycle model.

After a strong surge in 2010 from the 2009 downturn and solid growth in 2011, the market for optoelectronics, sensors/actuators, and discrete semiconductors (O-S-D) lost most of its momentum in 2012 as the world’s weak economy wobbles forward and uncertainty clouds the near-term outlook—particularly in Europe and the U.S.

14.1% CAGR for communications tops growth rate among major end-use system segments The communications and automotive IC markets are forecast to out-pace the growth of the total IC market through 2016 according to data in IC Insights’ soon-to-be-released IC Market Drivers 2013 — A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits. The communications segment is forecast to see a cumulative average a...

In a major shift for the IC industry, communications applications are forecast to surpass computer applications as the leading end-use for ICs starting in 2014 and lasting through at least 2016, according to data in IC Insights’ soon-to-be-released IC Market Drivers 2013 — A Study of Emerging and Major End-Use Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits.

In its upcoming October Update to The McClean Report, IC Insights will detail its forecast for the top-growing IC products in 2012. The prediction is for IC market growth decline of 1% in 2012, but with certain categories of product forecast for positive growth.

Before GlobalFoundries entered the IC foundry market, TSMC was by far the technology leader among the major pure-play IC foundries. In 2012, about 37% of TSMC’s revenue is expected to come from ≤45nm processing. As expected, with GlobalFoundries’ fabs producing AMD’s MPUs over the past few years, its processing technology is skewed toward leading-edge feature sizes.