Global Chip Market Forecast Report 2012

Market research firm IHS iSuppli's AMFT recently lowered its forecast for the growth rate of the global chip market in 2012. It believes that this year's market revenue will decline slightly by 0.1% compared with 2011, mainly due to the deteriorating macroeconomic environment and the resulting PC and Demand for other electronic products is weak.

IHS AMFT had previously predicted that the growth rate of the global chip market in 2012 would be less than 3% at the most; and if the agency's latest forecast data come true, 2012 will be the first decline in the global chip market since 2009. Dale Ford, an IHS senior analyst, said: “The chip market in 2012 may be in decline, which is a big deal for the global semiconductor industry.

Several industrial research institutions have recently lowered their forecast data for the global wafer market in 2012, including IC Insights, Semico Research and Future Horizons; many analysts now believe that the performance of the market in 2012 will be the same as in 2011, while a few Think it will decline - including Mike Cowan, a senior semiconductor industry analyst, and Semiconductor Intelligence, another market research firm. Others predict that the growth rate of the wafer market this year will be between 2% and 8%.

IHS's Ford said that although the overall electronics industry has been very weak after entering 2012, the agency has never predicted a decline in the chip market this year; but the second quarter market performance is disappointing, and the third quarter's expected performance is also affected by the economy. The influence of the economy is not optimistic, and various factors have allowed IHS to make a prediction that the market will show a recession this year.

According to IHS statistics, global wafer market sales declined by 3.6% in the first quarter from the fourth quarter of 2011, in line with the normal seasonal level; however, the chip market performance in the second quarter only grew by 3% compared to the first quarter. The performance is worse than the historical average. The agency pointed out that if the chip market grows in 2012 compared to 2011, the quarterly growth rate in the second quarter should be at least 4%.

Performance targets from various wafer suppliers show that the growth rate of the global wafer market in the third quarter of 2012 was about 6%, which was also lower than the previous seasonal level; IHS pointed out that the key third and fourth quarter growth efforts Too sluggish means that the overall chip market may not be able to obtain sufficient incentive to avoid the decline of the annual performance.

IHS pointed out that PC and related peripherals are the culprit of the performance of the overall chip market in 2012; previously, the agency predicted that the growth rate of wireless communications will be sufficient to drive the growth of the wafer market for the whole year, but it is now pointed out that the increasingly worse PC-related chips In the market, the recession may exceed the wireless communication market where the growth rate is estimated to be a median single digit, and the industrial application market with a smaller growth rate.

Ford pointed out that shipments of new products, including Ultrabooks and other ultra-thin PCs, in the second half of the year will bring a lot of demand to the PC chip market, but it will not be enough to offset the consumers who are restricted due to increasingly unfavorable economic factors. expenditure. The IHS now also expects that most types of wafers in 2012 will experience revenue declines.

As for 2013, IHS estimates that the wafer market will rebound more than 9%, mainly because the economic climate will improve at that time; however, the agency also stressed that there are still many high impact factors that may bring the risk of recession to the economy in 2013. , And therefore pulled down the performance of the electronics and semiconductor industry.