News Article
SEMI : Equipment Spending Plummets 13 Percent
SEMI has reported that worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached US$ 10.34 billion in the second quarter of 2012.
The billings figure is 4 percent lower than the first quarter of 2012 and 13 percent lower than the same quarter a year ago.
The data was gathered jointly with the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ) from over 100 global equipment companies that provide data on a monthly basis.
Global semiconductor equipment bookings were $9.70 billion in the second quarter of 2012. The figure is 10 percent lower than the same quarter a year ago and 4 percent lower than the bookings figure for the first quarter of 2012.
The quarterly billings data by region in millions of U.S. dollars is shown in the graph above and shows that apart from the rest of the world (ROW), Taiwan was the only country to increase spending on semiconductor equipment in the second quarter this year as compared to Q1 2012. Year-over-year, Japan and China cut their spending from Q2 2011 to Q2 2012 by 48 percent and 44 percent, respectively while Europe slashed its spending by a massive 56 percent.
