semiconductors

The global economy has started down a gradual path to recovery from COVID-19 in recent months as the world continues to combat the virus. Yet one sector – semiconductors – has shown impressive growth powered by a transformation hastened by the pandemic across industries ranging from education and...

Global business conditions continued to improve through October although the rate of improvement slowed a bit as pandemic concerns increased (Chart 1).Electronic Equipment Shipments RecoveringThird-quarter world electronic equipment shipment growth showed a big improvement over the second quarter...

The historic and forecast growth trends for cleanroom robots are in line with the long-term growth rates of semiconductor manufacturing equipment.

Although the semiconductor chip and capital equipment markets performed well in the first half of 2020, many of the electronic equipment end markets struggled globally. World electronic equipment sales declined almost 10% in 2Q’20 vs. 2Q’19.

So far the semiconductor industry is outperforming most other manufacturing sectors. Semiconductor capital equipment shipments were up 23% globally in 2Q’20 vs. 2Q’19 and semiconductor chip 3/12 growth is still in positive territory. However there are signs of slowing.

COVID-19 has forced all the players in the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain to reassess how much inventory they need to hold.

Included in this outlook is a discussion of the financial impact of the current pandemic and a forecast for GDP growth by major region for 2020 and 2021.

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.

VLSI research released the list of top suppliers of critical subsystems to the semiconductor and related manufacturing industries. The data shows EUV adoption greatly benefited optical subsystems suppliers in 2019 as other critical subsystem suppliers battled through the tail end of the downturn.

Plunging stock prices and Coronavirus-driven business shutdowns presently dominate the news. Current economic data, including the recently released February Global Purchasing Manager Index, support earlier negative predictions of an imminent industry decline.