Mark Osborne, Editor-in-Chief, Semiconductor Fabtech

ABSTRACT

During every January the major market forecasting firms and their leading market analysts present their forecasts of the semiconductor industry for the year ahead.With 2004 proving to be a very good year for the industry it is rather surprising that a good deal of pessimism about 2005 is evident. A round up of 2005 projections put the majority of forecasters in the pessimistic bracket while two forecasters in particular buck this trend with strong optimistic projections for the year ahead. Though its long been said, that "bad news sells newspapers," we focus attention on the two optimistic forecasts (Future Horizons, VLSI Research) for reasons that are not as obvious as you would think!