Overall, the forecast for revenue growth of the semiconductor industry in 2018 is an average of 8.3%, or 7.2% if we exclude the contrarian factor marking the market outlook for the end of 2017. While the growth forecasts of other predictors The figures are in single digits. Future Horizons further forecast the IC industry growth forecast for 2018 from 21% released in September 2017 to 21%, almost three times the average.
Readers familiar with Future Horizon's research methods will understand that our analysis is based on the semiconductor industry-related statistics we call the "four horsemen" - global economy, unit demand, wafer capacity, The average selling price of semiconductors (ASPs) ─ ─ as a benchmark; although these factors are mathematically indeterminant way together, but it is the growth of the semiconductor industry revenue driver, a strong economic climate will stimulate the IC Demand, wafer fab capacity will determine the level of supply and demand imbalances, and set the basis for the components ASP.
After eight years of healthy growth, the global economy finally usher in a long-awaited recovery in 2017. More importantly, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) raised its GDP forecast twice in 2017, the economic growth is Sustainable. This is completely different from what happened after the previous global financial turmoil, when the forecast made in January will continue to decline as time goes by. As the industry and consumer confidence pick up, The strong demand for semiconductor components, but also for the whole industry to bring growth momentum.
The industry's lack of capacity at all, coupled with the pace of production operations and inventory levels, have all been adjusted to below-average unit and economic growth over the past few years; supply capacity will suffer from huge capacity and inventory depletion , Resulting in out-of-stock, capacity allocation, and the subsequent upward pressure on ASP after a brief delay.As usual, memory is the first component to feel the impact as the production of such semiconductors is highly coordinated -tuned) traits.
So in 2017, for the first time since the global financial turmoil, we saw the above four knights achieve perfect consistency. In the same direction, we have achieved a growth of nearly 22% in the global wafer market in 2017 and revenue Totaling $ 411 billion. Future Horizons has been predicting such consistency and upturn over the past few years but continues to be hit hard by the global economic stagnation until last year's economic sentiment was stable. In January 2017, we set the full-year growth rate The forecast is raised from 11% to 18%, further to 20% in April, and finally the industry growth rate will reach 22% in 2017, laying the foundation for another strong growth in 2018.
Unless there is a major economic downturn, the economic recovery in 2017 will continue until 2018, further stimulating demand, which is not expected to happen at the moment. The IMF also revised its outlook for GDP growth at the Davos Forum not long ago In view of the fact that production capacity is still very tight, there are still out-of-stock and waiting for new production capacity to go on-line with delivery period of up to 12 months, these positive factors will enable the overall semiconductor industry growth rate to be maintained at double digits by 2018, We forecast up to 21%.
Compile: Judith Cheng