After a flat Q2, a 9% rise in Q3 is expected to be followed by a 3% rise in Q4. IC Insights says its 27% estimate is ‘conservative’.
In unit terms, Q1 2010 is expected to register the highest unit number ever shipped in the industry’s history at 44.5bn units – up a massive 59% on the 28bn units shipped in Q109.
If you look at the Q109 vs Q1 2010 comparison, the position is dramatic with Q1 2010 likely to be 50% up on Q109.
Unfortunately, IC Insights sees this difference narrowing as the year goes on, with Q2 2010 only 31% higher than Q209, Q3 2010 19% higher than Q309, and Q4 2010 only 15% higher than Q409.
Analogue ICs are expected to grow 28% this year with a 25% increase in unit shipments and a 2% increase in ASPs. ‘Every major analogue IC segment, except wireless telecom, is expected to log a double-digit market increase this year’, says IC Insights.
Programmable logic is expected to grow 33%; gate array 9%; standard cell 23%; telecom 20%; automotive 56%; industrial 17%.
The star segment this year will be DRAM which is expected to grow 74% with ‘at least’ a 50% increase in ASP.
Capex is the biggest potential ASP-killer. In 2009, industry capex sank to the lowest figure as a percentage of IC sales – 11% – in the history of the industry.
This year capex is expected to grow 57%. IC Insights points out that there have been only four occasions when capex had double-digit declines back-to-back: 1985/6; 1997/8; 2001/2 and 2008/9.
The biggest spenders on capex this year are expected to be the foundries with a capex total of $10.7bn.
After the foundries, come the DRAM companies with $8.2bn capex. To see the DRAM people spending 30% less on capex than the foundry people is astonishing.
Then come the flash and the MPU/MCU people on $6.9bn and $6.7bn, followed by the logic companies’ capex of $4.5bn, and the analogue capex of $3.7bn.
‘In 2007, the semiconductor industry spent over $32bn in capital for memory’, says IC Insights, ‘in 4Q09, after enduring the worst global economic recession in 63 years, both DRAM and flash memory manufacturers were working at 97%+ capacity utilisation and there were shortages of some memory part types (even after spending $32 billion in capital expenditures only two years earlier)! Now consider that, in 2009, the memory suppliers spent only $7.5 billion in capital outlays!’
IC Insights believes that even after doubling memory capital spending this year, it will not be enough to prevent shortages and rising ASPs of memory devices in 2010 and 2011.
