Taiwan & Korea To Dominate Equipment Market
Burgeoning consumer demand for tablet, smartphone and mobile devices will see Taiwanese chipmakers, LED manufacturers, and Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT) firms spend nearly $40 billion in the next two years on equipment and materials.
This is fuelling excitement for SEMICON Taiwan 2012 which is to be held between September 5th and 7th at the TWTC Nangang Hall in Taipei.
In particular, chip foundries, fabless IC firms, OSATs and LED manufacturers are pushing Taiwanese investment.
As predicted by to the 2012 mid-year edition of the SEMI Capital Equipment Forecast, market growth is expected in only two regions in 2012 -Taiwan and Korea. These two regions are anticipated to be the largest markets for capital equipment in 2012.
Semiconductor equipment sales in Taiwan will increase from $8.5 billion in 2011 to $9.3 billion in 2012. and total semiconductor equipment sales worldwide are expected to reach a whopping $42.4 billion.
This beats the first quarter forecasts, and is driven by increased spending from Taiwanese foundries and OSATs. Investments from foundries are focusing on building advanced nodes capacities in order to meet strong demand for 28nm process.
"The overall Taiwan backend equipment market on the OSAT side is forecast at about $1.4 billion in 2012. Major OSATs are speeding up their advanced packaging investment in Taiwan to fulfil increased demand from mobile devices," notes Terry Tsao, SEMI president of Taiwan and Southeast Asia.
"The investment momentum in Taiwan could continue into 2013 especially from foundries. Both TSMC and UMC embarked on new multi-billion 300mm fab construction in the second quarter - aiming to provide sufficient capacity for 28nm and below in the years to come," Tsao adds.
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