This year's revenue will decline - Global Semiconductor

This year's economic sentiment is worse than originally estimated, and we have only to revisit global semiconductor sales. We estimate that this year's turnover will be US$303 billion (8.82 trillion TWD), a decline of 2.3% from 2011’s US$310 billion. Since 2009, global semiconductor revenue has grown each year, and 2012 is the first recession. Fortunately, 2013 is expected to resume growth.

Of the six major semiconductor application markets in 2012, only the wireless communication application market has grown. Five major application markets, such as data processing, consumer electronics, industry, wired communications, and automobiles, have all experienced declines.

Recoverable growth data processing next year is the largest application market for semiconductors. PC (Personal Computer) is the most important application market for data processing. Under the influence of poor PC performance, the data processing application market this year will have a 7.8% decline in semiconductor revenue from last year. Global PC shipments in 2012 were lower than last year's, which was the first recession in 11 years. The main reason was that due to the declining economy and competition from new platforms (such as flat panel).

The sales of smart phones and tablet PCs have enabled the wireless communications semiconductor market to grow healthily this year. It is estimated that wireless communication semiconductor revenue will grow by 7.7% this year compared to last year.

As long as the growth rate of global GDP (gross domestic production) in 2013 can be slightly improved as we expected, 2013 will be a better year for the semiconductor market. It is estimated that global semiconductor revenue will grow by 8.2 as compared to 2012. %. Afterwards, as long as the overall economy is not unexpected, the semiconductor market will continue to grow until 2016.

From a regional point of view, only the semiconductor market in the Asia-Pacific region this year grew by 0.3% over the previous year, and the rest of the region has experienced a recession. In Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, the semiconductor market declined by 9.3% this year compared to last year. Japan’s decline was 4.7% compared to last year, and the US’s decline was 4.6% from last year.

Because the overall market is declining, almost all semiconductor components have declined this year compared to last year, with only CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) image sensors, LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes), ASICs (Special Purpose Integrated Circuits), and sensors. (Sensor) grew more than last year. Their annual growth rates were 31.8%, 17.5%, 5.6%, and 4.1%, respectively.

Memory market minus 10.7%

This year's memory market is one of the main causes of the semiconductor market recession. Compared with last year, the memory market has declined by 10.7% this year. This year's DRAM (dynamic random access memory) market is expected to decline 11% from last year, and NAND Flash (storage flash memory) is 6.9% lower than last year.

DRAM is due to the poor PC market, which led to sluggish demand and lower prices, which led to a decline in turnover. In the NAND Flash market, although shipments have risen due to hot sales of mobile communications equipment, prices have dropped due to oversupply, which has led to a decline in revenue.