Surge still seen in chip markets next year, followed by slowdown
By Mark LaPedus
Semiconductor Business News
(09/06/00, 04:29:33 PM EDT)
SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- The semiconductor industry will continue to surge in 2001, but there are fears of a possible slowdown in 2002, according to forecasts from Semico Research Corp. of Phoenix, Ariz.
"We see a good year in 2001," said analyst Jim Feldhan, president of Semico, in a presentation at the "Semico Forecast Workshop 2000" here today. "But we believe there will be some capacity pressures in 2002, which will cause some downward pricing pressures [in the semiconductor industry,]" he added. "Weaker consumer demand in 2002 will dampen end market growth."
Still, analysts from Semico were bullish about several major chip markets for 2001, especially microprocessors, chip sets, and DRAMs.
Driven by decent PC growth, the worldwide "MOS micro logic" market will grow 26.5% next year, from $63.6 billion in 2000, to $80.4 billion in 2001, according to Tony Massimini, an analyst who track this industry for Semico. The "MOS micro logic" market refers to microprocessors, microcontrollers, and related products.
By 2004, the total market for these devices will hit $142 billion, Massimini predicted.
"The high growth market for these device will be in communications," he said. "The high-end of the microprocessor market will also remain strong, but the low-end of the microcontroller market is on a downward trend."
The largest market for processors remains the same: the PC. The worldwide growth of desktop PCs is expected to grow from 110 million units in 2000 to 122 million units in 2001, he said. In the notebook sector, the growth of these products will jump from 32.2 million units in 2000 to 40.5 million units in 2001, Massimini said.
For DRAMs, the outlook is also robust. The worldwide DRAM market is expected to grow from $32 billion in 2000, to $50 billion in 2001, according to Sherry Garber, analyst tracking this industry segment for Semico.
By 2002, however, the market will slightly dip to $48 billion, she said. However, the market will rebound, growing from $60 billion in 2003 to $80 billion in 2004, she said.
In the short term, however, Garber was bullish--at least for some technologies. "We believe that DDR DRAM will become the next high-replacement for SDRAM," she said. "We believe that Rambus DRAMs will be a niche market. Rambus as a product is unclear. It's still plagued by high costs and low yields," Garber said, referring to the high-bandwidth memory format promoted by Rambus Inc. of Mountain View, Calif. |
