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.

IC Insights will release its 200+ page Mid-Year Update to the 2018 McClean Report later this month. The Mid-Year Update revises IC Insights’ worldwide economic and IC industry forecasts through 2022 that were originally published in The 2018 McClean Report issued in January of this year.

The Mid-Year Update, from IC Insights, is set to be released July 2018, and will revise IC Insights’ worldwide economic and IC industry forecasts through 2022, which were originally presented in the 2018 McClean Report issued in January of this year.

  IC Insights has recently released its update to its 2018 IC Market Drivers Report. The update includes IC Insights’ latest outlooks on the smartphone, automotive, PC/tablet and IoT markets.

  Consumer demand and government mandates for electronic systems that improve vehicle performance, that add comfort and convenience, and that warn, detect, and take corrective measures to keep drivers safe and alert are being added to new cars each year. 

The spread of digital camera applications in vehicles, machine vision, human recognition and security systems, as well as for more powerful camera phones will drive CMOS image sensor sales to an eighth straight record-high level this year with worldwide revenues growing ten percent to $13.7bn, following a 19% surge in 2017, according to IC Insights’ 2018 O-S-D Report - A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators, a...

The top ten IC suppliers in the $54.5bn analogue market last year accounted for 59% of the category’s worldwide sales in 2017, according to a recent monthly update to IC Insights’ 2018 McClean Report. Collectively, the top ten companies generated $32.3bn in analogue IC sales last year compared to $28.4bn in 2016, which was a 14% increase and a gain of two percentage points in market share during 2017, said the 50-page April ...

Since the global economic recession of 2008-2009, the IC industry has been on a mission to pare down older capacity (i.e., ≤200mm wafers) in order to produce devices more cost effectively on larger wafers.

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.

  Research has shown that the ten largest semiconductor R&D spenders increased their collective expenditures to $35.9bn in 2017, an increase of six percent compared to $34.0bn in 2016. Intel continued to far exceed all other semiconductor companies with R&D spending that reached $13.1bn.

Throughout 2017, IC industry wafer capacity, specifically in the memory segment, was inadequate to meet demand. However, with Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron, Intel, Toshiba/WD, and XMC/Yangtze River Storage Technology planning to significantly ramp up 3D NAND flash capacity over the next few years, and Samsung and SK Hynix boosting DRAM capacity this year and next, what does this mean for total industry capacity growth?

Based on data presented in the new, 2018 edition of IC Insights’ McClean Report - A Complete Analysis and Forecast of the Integrated Circuit Industry (Figure 1), annual semiconductor unit shipments (integrated circuits and opto-sensor-discretes, or O-S-D, devices) are expected to grow nine percent in 2018 and top one trillion units for the first time.

According to IC Insights’ new 2018 McClean Report, which becomes available this month, sales of analogue ICs are expected to show the strongest growth rate among major integrated circuit market categories during the next five years. The McClean Report forecasts that revenues for analogue products - including both general purpose and application-specific devices - will increase by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6% t...

According to IC Insights’ new 2018 Integrated Circuit Market Drivers Report, integrated circuit sales for automotive systems and the IoT are forecast to grow 70% faster than total IC revenues between 2016 and 2021. ICs used in automobiles and other vehicles are forecast to generate worldwide sales of $42.9bn in 2021 compared to $22.9bn in 2016, while integrated circuit revenues for IoT functionality in a wide range of systems, sensors,...

According to data presented in the 2018 edition of the IC Insights’ IC Market Drivers - A Study of Key System Applications Fueling Demand for Integrated Circuits that will be released later this year, automotive electronic system sales are forecast to rise by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.4% from 2016 through 2021, which is the highest among six major end-use system categories (Figure 1).

According to a new update of IC Insights’ 2017 O-S-D Report - A Market Analysis and Forecast for Optoelectronics, Sensors/Actuators, and Discrete Semiconductors, more than a dozen product categories in optoelectronics, sensors and actuators, and discretes semiconductors (O-S-D) are on track to set record-high annual sales this year.

The 30-page October update to IC Insights' McClean Report will include a detailed analysis of the company’s revised forecasts for the IC, O-S-D, and total semiconductor markets through 2021. IC Insights has raised its IC market growth rate forecast for 2017 to 22%, up six percentage points from the 16% increase shown in its Mid-Year Update. The IC unit volume shipment growth rate forecast has also been increased from 11%...

IC manufacturers are increasing efforts to maximise fabrication plants using 300 and 200mm diameter silicon substrates because the prospects of large 450mm wafers are going nowhere. The number of 300mm wafer production-class fabs in operation worldwide is expected to increase each year between now and 2021 to reach 123 compared to 98 in 2016, according to the forecast in IC Insights’ Global Wafer Capacity 2017-2021 report.

  IC Insights has revised its outlook for semiconductor industry capital spending and presented its new findings in the August Update to The McClean Report 2017. IC Insights’ latest forecast is for semiconductor industry capital spending to climb 20% this year.

In its Mid-Year Update to The McClean Report 2017, which originally was published in January 2017, IC Insights has revised its outlook and analysis of the IC industry and presented its new findings. Among the revisions is a complete update of forecast growth rates of the 33 main product categories classified by the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organisation (WSTS). Figure 1 shows the complete ranking of IC products by f...