Growth for Semiconductor Equipment Sales in 2011 but Down in 2012

The current SEMI Year-end Consensus Forecast anticipates growth of 4.7 percent for this year (to $41.8 billion) and a moderate decline of 10.8 percent for 2012 for worldwide sales of new semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Wafer processing equipment, the largest product segment by dollar value, is expected to increase 9.3 percent in 2011 to set a record at $32.7 billion. The forecast predicts that the market for assembly and packaging equipment will decline by 12.5 percent to $3.4 billion in 2011. The market for semiconductor test equipment is forecasted to decline by 10.3 percent, reaching $3.7 billion this year.

Growth is expected for four regions in 2011; Europe (66.9 percent increase over 2010), North America (53.0%), Japan (31.2 percent), and China (2.3 percent).  Forecasted spending increases in 2011 will be particularly dramatic in North America and Europe owing to Intel’s and GlobalFoundries’ aggressive CAPEX plans.

Additional projects driving the North American market include IBM Microelectronics investments in Building 323, while Micron/IM Flash Lehi and Manassas fabs and Samsung’s Austin’s fabs are all equipping this year. These investments will make the new equipment market in North America the largest with $8.8 billion, followed by Taiwan ($8.1 billion), South Korea ($8.0 billion), and Japan ($5.8 billion).  Taiwan, South Korea, and Rest of World experienced negative growth rates in 2011. 

In 2012, only South Korea is expected to have positive growth (7.5 percent). In 2013, the market is expected to rebound for all regions except South Korea, due to high growth in 2012.

The following results are given in terms of market size in billions of U.S. dollars.

Last year’s record fab equipment spending plays out into increased production capacity for 2012 and 2013— where we estimate growth at 6% and 7%, respectively. Note that the increase in capacity is coming primarily from technological upgrades, not new fabs. 

Japan still remains the largest chip manufacturing region in terms of capacity with about 23% of the worldwide total. The majority of that capacity is for logic at 37%, followed closely by memory at 34%.

By 2013, we expect that memory will dominate worldwide fab capacity at 38%, compared to 19% in 2000. This is primarily at the expense of MPU/Logic capacity. Foundry capacity is only expected to increase by 7% — to total 32% of global fab capacity, by 2013.

The SEMI Industry Research and Statistics group provides timely market and trend information for market research, competitive analysis, and sales forecasting. We focus on the global semiconductor capital equipment, selected materials markets and fab forecasting data. Please visit www.semi.org/marketinfo for additional information.

SEMI has a long tradition of generating “Consensus Forecasts” for new semiconductor equipment. These forecasts are published two times a year in conjunction with SEMICON West and SEMICON Japan.  The intent of these forecasts is to provide a gauge of member sentiment for market conditions.  SEMI bases this forecast on monthly “bookings and billings” data that it collects directly from semiconductor equipment suppliers, data from the SEMI World Fab database, and feedback from equipment suppliers. This forecast covers both “Front-end”, equipment typically associated with wafer fabrication, and “Back-end” equipment, equipment used to package and test individual devices. The “Consensus Forecast” contrasts to the “bottoms-up” forecast generated by the World Fab database, which bases its projections on CapEx announcements by device manufacturers and only covers fab equipment, including used and equipment manufactured directly by fabs.

SEMI
www.semi.org
December 6, 2011