Asia-Pacific remains dominant market for IC sales

The Asia-Pacific region is particularly dominant with regard to IC marketshare in the computer and communications categories, and to a lesser extent in the consumer and industrial categories. Globally, the communications segment first surpassed the computer segment to become the largest end use market for ICs in 2013 and it is forecast to extend its marketshare lead to 1.1 points in 2014.

Europe is forecast to account for the largest share of the automotive IC market in 2014, but with Asia-Pacific increasingly becoming the focus of new car sales, it is expected to gain top share of IC sales in this systems segment in 2016.

IC Insights’ 'Update to the 2014 IC Market Drivers' report forecasts total IC usage by system type through the year 2017. Highlights from forecast data include:

• The two highest growth end-use markets for ICs are forecast to be automotive and communications, having 11.0% and 7.4% 2013-2017 CAGRs, respectively.
• After slumping to only $10.6bn in 2009, the automotive IC market is forecast to reach $21.4bn in 2014 and $28.8bn in 2017.
• The two largest end-use market segments - computer and communications - are forecast to hold 73.7% of the total IC market in 2017, about flat from the 73.9% share forecast in 2014.
• The Asia-Pacific region is forecast to gain IC marketshare over the next four years and reach 60.9% in 2017. In contrast, Europe and Japan are expected to continue to decline in share with the Japan region holding only 7.7% the total $330.2bn IC market in 2017.