CS International assembles its strongest ever line-up of speakers

In the lighting market, sales of LEDs are on the rise, partly due to the phasing out of incandescent sources in many countries. By 2018 it is expected that more than half of all revenue from bulbs will come from the sales of lamps incorporating solid-state sources, according to William Rhodes, IHS Technology.

A surge in chip sales is also expected in devices emitting at shorter wavelengths. “The UV LED market will increase from $90m in 2014 to $500m in 2019,” remarked Pars Mukish, Analyst, Yole Développement.

The GaAs microelectronics sector is also enjoying this increase. An initial estimate provided by Eric Higham, Strategy Analytics, suggests that in 2014 sales will hit $6.6bn. However he added that this figure might be revised upwards, and could reach $7bn. The launch of CMOS PAs is yet to deliver a significant dent to GaAs sales, but Higham believes silicon is a threat, and expects this type of device to have a 20% share of the market by 2018.

In contrast, in the MPU sector, silicon is under threat from III-Vs. GaAs is viewed as a promising replacement for silicon in the channels of transistors, as this could enable a continuation of Moore’s Law throughout this decade and beyond. Mike Corbett, Linx Consulting, is predicting that at around 2016 Intel will launch ICs formed from 7nm node transistors sporting III-V channels. Foundries are tipped to follow suit at the start of the next decade.

However, that’s not all of the opportunities for compound semiconductors: Asif Anwar, Strategy Analytics, believes that despite difficult conditions surrounding defence spending, sales of GaAs and GaN RF chips will increase substantially over the next few years; Karl Melkonyan, IHS Technology, thinks that increased deployment of solar technologies in the regions of the world where sunlight is most intense will underpin the growth of the CPV market; and Pierric Gueguen, Yole Développement, predicts that sales of wide bandgap devices will take off in this decade.