Chip market ready for steady rebound

LONDON – The global semiconductor market is set to enjoy long-term growth with a compound annual growth rate of 9 percent over the period 2010 to 2018, according to market research firm Databeans Inc. (Reno, Nevada).

Databeans said that while the recovery would be variable by region -  with AsiaPac and the U.S. leading and Europe and Japan lagging – the semiconductor industry will see better growth in 2013 and would carry this momentum into the years to come.

The market is recovering from sluggish demand across all market sectors due to global economic uncertainty, which produced a flat market in 2012. Poor demand through 2012 resulted in a build-up of chip inventories.

Databeans expects that 2013 will see a solid rebound, growing by 7 percent from 2012 reach $313.04 billion global chip sales. Averaging selling prices (ASPs) have stabilized, particularly in memory and demand is coming from the mobile phone and tablet computer sectors for mobile processors, logic ICs and NAND flash memory.

The strongest sector in 2013 is forecast to be the wired communications market, which will grow by 15 percent and reach nearly $32.5 billion. This is attributed to the continued rollout of infrastructure equipment supporting data centers worldwide.



Click on image to enlarge.


Worldwide semiconductor revenue forecast by market segment. Source: Databeans Inc.

Wireless communications growth will from China as domestic handset OEMs including Lenovo, ZTE, and Huawei target lower income individuals with handsets priced at or around 1000 Yuan (about $160). The weakest sector is the computer segment, expected to grow by 4 percent in 2013 to $82.5 billion in semiconductor sales.


Related links and articles:

www.databeans.com

News articles:


Penn keeps predicting chip market growth

Excess chip inventory set to hurt Q1

Intel expects growth in 2013