Semiconductor Equipment

Paul Cohen and Bob Smith of the Electronic System Design Alliance and SEMI senior director of product marketing David Ghodsizadeh joined Francoise von Trapp of 3D InCites for a podcast to discuss key takeaways from the Q4 2022 EDMD report.

To help member companies set their course for 2023, SEMI recently shared insights from its Industry Strategy Symposium (ISS) and Semiconductor Manufacturing Monitor report during a podcast with 3D InCites.

SEMI Market Intelligence Team (MIT) recently recorded the first podcast in a new series with 3D InCites that will provide semiconductor manufacturing updates across the wafer fab; equipment; materials; and assembly, packaging and test markets to help semiconductor companies with business decisions.

Policymakers are increasing semiconductor manufacturing capacity to strengthen supply chains and meet growing demand for semiconductors through robust incentive packages totaling hundreds of billions of dollars. This global effort hinges on semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME).

One of the surprising side effects that came out of the COVID-19 pandemic is the acceleration of the digital transformation of global economies, which has driven a structural shift and propelled the already mature semiconductor industry to record highs.

China’s semiconductor sector has exploded to become one of the largest in the world and match the region’s prominence as the biggest consumer of chips. From 2015 to 2020 alone, revenue of China’s integrated circuit (IC) industry expanded at a rapid clip of 20% CAGR (RMB) to $128 billion.

Sales of process power and reactive gas subsystems for semiconductor manufacturing equipment are on track to achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% between 2016 and 2021 – far outpacing the critical subsystems industry average of 16.4% due to multiple positive factors.

All countries and regions have seen a sharp manufacturing slowdown. China, hit hard in February, recovered in March and then dipped in slightly but the balance of the world saw manufacturing plunge in April as COVID-19 forced factory closures. Unemployment skyrocketed and GDPs plunged.

We are now in the recovery phase of the current business cycle with SEMI equipment already in a growth mode. However significant economic and geopolitical concerns persist.

Reports of 2Q’19 financials from all of the major OEMs in our 213 company global sample show that their electronic equipment sales declined 1.4 percent compared to the same quarter of last year.