3rd Mar 09
Investment in semiconductor fabs
is drying up like drought hit lakes
Semiconductor industry's present situation is comparable
to a drought-hit planes. It's a drying market. January of
2009 is worse than December of 2008. Slump in PC sales and
mobile phones sales are the biggest reason.
According to Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the
three-month average of worldwide sales of semiconductors
dropped by 28.6 percent in January 2009 to $15.33 billion,
compared to sales of $21.47 billion in January 2008.
When the chips sales are down, so is the effect on semiconductor
equipment. Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International
(SEMI) organization has said in its latest press release,
year 2009 spending on worldwide fabs equipping front-end
facilities is expected to hit the lowest levels since 1994.
However it's not going to be a continuous bad story, Intel
has planned multi billion dollar investment to build new
advanced fabs in U.S. It might be followed by AMD and few
more of top 10 semiconductor vendors. Emerging economies
like India and China are also the regions giving importance
to investment in semiconductor fabs.
The problem with the semiconductor industry is lack of
proper market analysis and estimation tools. Most of the
market research reports keep changing their predictions
now and then with their prediction mostly being wrong. Ironic
is that, these same chips are used (indirectly in PCs) to
analyze, research and predict the markets of various product
segments and services all over world. But if we see the
way DRAM market and such memory market's slump and growth,
it's as worst as vegetable or fish market. During 1995-97,
there were reports saying, total semiconductor will reach
300 billion US$ by 2000, forget 2000, even by 2008 it has
not reached even closer.
However one thing is true, semiconductors are engines of
future technologies. Simple examples like electric cars,
total replacement technology for papers, and solar energy
harvesting can make semiconductor industry cross 300 billion
US$ any time sooner.
The lakes are surely going to be full with fresh water,
keep your own analysis rather than relying on those expensive
market research analysis reports.
A few trigger points are enough to fuel the growth. Environment
friendly mass consuming technologies are very-very important.
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