Industry group predicts $1 trillion semiconductor market
By Dan Neel
THE GLOBAL SEMICONDUCTOR industry will reach a record $205 billion in 2000, mushrooming to $319 billion over the next three years, according to an annual forecast released Wednesday by the SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association).
Strong sales of networking, broadband, and wireless devices along with a continued appetite for personal computers will increase global semiconductor sales 37 percent this year, growing another 22 percent in 2001 to $249 billion, then hitting an astounding $1 trillion over the next decade, the forecast predicted.
While the PC processor market will remain the principal growth driver for the industry, the rapidly evolving wireless device category will stoke the markets for solid-state flash memory, standard cell ASICs, and programmable logic devices, the forecast found.
New semiconductor fabrication plants coming online to meet the broadening demand from geographic regions outside the United States also factor in to the SIA's optimistic forecast.
Illustrating this broadening market, the SIA forecast reports that the two largest semiconductor markets -- the Americas and Asia-Pacific -- make up less than 60 percent of the total worldwide market, while 10 years ago the United States and Japan alone accounted for two-thirds of it.
Dan Neel is an InfoWorld senior writer |
