To All,
Taiwan's chip target: $66 billion by 2005
By Mark LaPedus
TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Taiwan's ambitious IC industry has set yet another
staggering goal, projecting that the island's total chip output will grow nearly
eight-fold from $8.4 billion in 1996 to $66 billion by 2005.
Taiwan also hopes to nearly triple its worlwide market share in the IC
business from a mere 2.9% in 1996, to 8% or more by 2005, according to
Chintay Shih, president of the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association
(TSIA), in a speech given during the opening ceremonies at the
second-annual Semicon Taiwan `97 trade show in Taipei today. Semicon
Taiwan, which runs this week Monday through Wednesday, features 850
exhibit booths from more than 500 companies.
However, these percentages do not tell the entire story in Taiwan's exploding
IC industry. The island's massive IC wafer foundry business is not included in
the worldwide market share numbers, said Shih, who is also chairman of the
government-sponsored Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI),
based in Hsinchu.
To achieve Taiwan's future goals in ICs, the island's chip makers have
announced a slew of new and costly 8-inch and 300-mm fabs since the
beginning of this year--for a total investment of a whopping $67 billion, Shih
estimated.
Today, Taiwan has about nineteen 8-inch fabs up and running on the island. If
Taiwan's chip makers make good on its future promises, Shih claimed that the
island could have four additional 8-inch fabs--and a whopping 24 to 25
300-mm plants--in operation over the next decade.
It's anybody's guess if Taiwan can actually build all of these fabs, but it's clear
that the island's chip makers cannot do it alone. ``We will need to cooperate
with other semiconductor companies (to achieve these goals),'' Shih said
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