North America

The recent anti-globalization political rhetoric raises a number of challenges for the semiconductor supply chain. Throughout the ongoing US-China trade war, and now the dispute between South Korea and Japan, most attention has focused on the consequences for players at the top of the supply chain.

The photomask market has seen exceptional growth of 13% and 8% in 2017 and 2018, respectively. The upsurge is striking given that, in the early to mid-2000s, the photomask market averaged less than 4 percent annual growth. And the gap between the past two years and the previous ten is remarkable.

For the semiconductor industry, 2018 was nothing if not incredible. Chip revenue shot up to $469 billion, trouncing the record-setting $412 billion reached in 2017 to reach a new high. Both semiconductor equipment and materials hit record revenues of $65 billion and $52 billion, respectively.

Vacuum subsystems sales account for 1/3 of expenditure on all critical subsystems used in semiconductor manufacturing equipment (excluding optical subsystems). The increase in vacuum process intensity of the semiconductor industry means that by 2023, the market for vacuum subsystems could top $3.1B.

Despite the growth, reclaim suppliers continue to struggle to cost-effectively remove complex materials from wafers in the face of ever-tightening particle specifications, cope with the shortage of feedstock for reclaim, and manage yields from repeatedly reclaimed wafers.

The global semiconductor materials market increased 9.6% while worldwide semiconductor revenues increased 21.6% from the prior year in 2017. Total wafer fabrication materials and packaging materials totaled $27.8B and $19.1B, respectively, in 2017, according to the SEMI Materials Market Data Report.

Semiconductor markets in 2017 far outstripped the average revenue forecast of 5% growth at the start of the year, logging a robust 22% increase for a second consecutive year of record revenues, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS).