Pam, Thanks for picking up on that article By Ionut Arghire, Hardware Editor on the SEMI forecast. I went to the SEMI site to find the SEMI release which I am posting below along with a couple of tables included in the SEMI release which gives a good look at the industry from 2007 to 2010.
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Semiconductor Equipment Sales to Fall to $30.91 Billion in 2008
SEMI Announces Year-end Forecast for Chip Equipment Industry
TOKYO, Japan – December 2, 2008 – SEMI projects 2008 equipment sales to reach $30.91 billion according to the year-end edition of the SEMI Capital Equipment Forecast, released here today by SEMI at the annual SEMICON Japan exposition.
The forecast indicates that, following 5.7 percent market growth in 2007, the equipment market will decline almost 28 percent in 2008. SEMI expects the market to decline about 21 percent in 2009, and then post almost 31 percent growth in 2010.
"Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment sales have declined to levels last seen in 2003 and we anticipate a second year of double-digit decline in 2009," said Stanley T. Myers, president and CEO of SEMI. "Impaired or nonexistent business trend visibility is pervasive amidst the deteriorating global economy. Therefore our outlook for 2010 is based on patterns of previous industry recoveries."
Wafer processing equipment, the largest product segment by dollar value, is expected to decline by about 28 percent in 2008 to $22.95 billion. Survey respondents anticipate that the market for assembly and packaging equipment will decline by almost 24 percent to $2.16 billion in 2008. The market for equipment to test semiconductors is expected to decline by about 27 percent to $3.69 billion this year.
The Japanese market is projected to decline by about 20 percent, but it will surpass Taiwan to become the leading region for sales of new equipment.
South Korea is expected to decline by about 28 percent in 2008, and sales of new equipment in China will decline by 35 percent, while the Rest-of-World market regions will decline by about 10 percent.
The following survey results are given in terms of market size in billions of U.S. dollars and percentage growth over the prior year:>>
The highlights in yellow show the trend of actuals and forecast over the years from 2007 to 2010. Note that even with the strong recovery of sales projected for 2010 compared to 2009, sales will only come back up to the approximate level of 2008 because the percentage gain, while large, is based on a very small 2009 number. In other words, revenue for 2010 will still be much less than revenue achieved in 2007.
We have no official projections available for 2011, but a percentage increase of about 35 percent over 2010 is required to get back to the level of 2007. That means no increase in revenue in this sector for 5 years compared to 2007 even if the 35 percent number for 2011 is achieved. |
