Market Research
The "2003 Q2 Wafer Pricing Survey"
gauged the average price paid per wafer by 114 fabless companies and
integrated device manufacturers (IDMs). The responses indicate that average
CMOS wafer prices were essentially flat from Q1 to Q2 2003.
"The lack in sequential wafer pricing growth isn't a surprise given that
foundry utilisation has remained well below 90%, and prices are not
stabilising," comments Jodi Shelton, co-founder and executive director of
the FSA.
"Another contributing factor to wafer prices not increasing is the emphasis
being placed on establishing multiple foundry relationships. This helps
guarantee a more competitive pricing environment for customers."
Additionally, the results indicate that fabless companies put a greater
emphasis on designing for advanced geometries than IDMs. More than 13% of
fabless orders used 0.13micron, compared with only 8% of IDM orders. Some
26% of fabless wafer orders included 0.18micron process geometry, compared
with 18% of all IDM orders placed. In contrast, the majority of IDM
participants ordered 0.35micron processes.
Overall, the survey results suggest fabless companies paid more for wafers
than IDMs, and IDMs typically ordered a higher quantity of wafers per order
than fabless companies.
SEMI reported its book-to-bill ratio as 0.89 for North American equipment
producers in May 2003. This is based on bookings of $751mn, 32% down on May
2002. Billings of $840mn were 3.5% down on last year.
"The outlook for front-end equipment remains sluggish, suggesting a
single-digit recovery this year, although some analysts remain hopeful for
the possibility of 10-15% billings growth in 2003," remarked Stanley Myers,
president and CEO of SEMI. "Conditions are more positive for the test,
assembly and packaging segment, which continues to post modest gains and
could experience a double-digit recovery this year."
VLSI Research released market data for May 2003. The company puts the
worldwide semiconductor equipment book-to-bill ratio at 0.95. Bookings were
put at $2.35bn and billings at $2.49bn. The IC industry managed a 1.02 ratio
based on bookings of $10.56bn and billings of $10.35bn. Capacity utilisation
in fabs was estimated at 87.9% and for 0.13micron and better technologies
more than 90%.
According to In-Stat/MDR, the outlook for the future of customer-specific,
MOS cell-based designs, containing one or more blocks of embedded SRAM, will
be no brighter than that of the overall MOS cell-based ASIC market. This
market will see its worldwide revenues grow from $5.65bn last year, to
$7.73bn by the year 2007, posting a compound annual growth rate of 11.5%.
While to varying degrees, all of the various static RAM architectures will
find applications, only a few will find acceptance in a large number of
designs, with the most dominant being the single-port, dual-port and
multi-port.
Of the five major embedded SRAM architecture categories defined;
single-/dual-/multi-port, 1-transistor, FIFO, cache and other, it will be
the single-/dual-/multi-port category that will represent the most
incorporated architecture, being included in more than 90% of all design
starts averaged over the forecast period.
Semiconductor Intelligence is expecting the silicon on insulator market to
grow at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 35% from 2002 to 2007.
The bulk silicon market, for comparison, is put at 14% over the same period.
By 2007, SOI will make up 10-15% of the total bulk silicon market. This is
lower than previous estimates from market researchers. Key issues for 300mm
use of SOI are pricing and yield rates.
The semiconductor materials market growth for this year is estimated at 10%
by the Information Network. This compares with 4% growth last year. Looking
forward, good growth areas are seen as low-k (k less than 3.6) dielectrics
and CMP slurry. The low-k sector is forecast to grow 30% yearly for the
period 2002-2005 and slurry at more than 12%. Sputtering target sales will
suffer from the increase in competing deposition technologies - CVD and
electrochemical. The market researcher believes that 300mm wafer prices are
"unsustainably high".
VLSI Research published its 2003 10 Best ratings for customer satisfaction
from semiconductor equipment suppliers. US etch tool company Tegal made No.1
with an 8.31 rating in the "Focused" supplier segment, while Hitachi High
Technologies led the large supplier division with 7.44.
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