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In the March update to The McClean Report, IC Insights is now forecasting that the worldwide IC market is expected to rebound 27% in 2010 to US$253 billion. At the beginning of the year, the market research firm expected a 15% growth over 2009, though had then suggested that should first quarter sales show any growth over fourth quarter 2009, then a 25% plus growth figure would occur. The first quarter is seasonally the weakest in a given year in the industry. IC Insights believes that preliminary data shows that the first quarter saw revenue grow 3% over fourth quarter figures. Read more >>

The small 0.3% rise in worldwide semiconductor sales in January, compared to December, 2009 may not seem significant at first glance. Seasonally, January is a weak month and normally figures of reported several percentage points lower than the previous month. With US$22.5 billion in sales in January and a slight increase over December, overall growth for the year is now expected to top 20% and that may well be a conservative figure when third quarter figures are eventually released. Read more >>

The next three years are set to be highly profitable for the major DRAM producers, according to the latest preliminary forecast figures from market research firm iSuppli Corp. DRAM revenue is expected to rise to US$31.9 billion in 2010, a 40.4 percent increase from US$22.7 billion achieved in 2009. However, 2010 is projected to be the peak in revenue earnings over the next four years, with the chance that 2013 could lead to losses for some as revenue is forecasted to fall to approximately US$26 billion. The yearly declines in revenue beyond 2010, is attributed to falling prices as new capacity gradually comes on stream. Read more >>

In the acquisition of primarily NOR flash manufacturer Numonyx, which was a joint venture between Intel Corporation, STMicroelectronics and Francisco Partners, Micron Technology’s, Chairman and CEO Steve Appleton noted in a conference call that the newly combined organization would have the second-largest share of the memory market after Samsung. Appleton claimed that it would 19% share, with Samsung holding 29% and slightly more that 17% share noted for Hynix, which has been the longstanding number 2 in the market. Privately held Numonyx was acquired by Micron, via an all-stock transaction valuing Numonyx at approximately US$1.27 billion. Read more >>

VLSI Research has awarded Oerlikon Systems a ‘five star rating’ for customer satisfaction in 2009. The five star ratings are handed out by chip equipment users (representing 95% of the world’s semiconductor market) and compiled by VLSI Research as part of their 2009 Customer Satisfaction Report. Read more >>

Continuing its conservative approach to capital expenditure and capacity additions, UMC is raising CapEx for 2010 to between US$1.2 and US$1.5 billion. CapEx for 2009 was reported as US$550 million. The increased spending was due to strong demand for leading-edge technology, which is capacity constrained at its two, 300mm fabs. UMC said that overall fab utilization fell slightly in the fourth quarter to 86%, down from 89% in the seasonally strong third quarter. Utilization rates are expected to remain in the high-80’s for the first quarter of 2010 and wafer shipments to be flat with the previous quarter. Read more >>

Due to the strong rebound in sales in the second-half of the year, gloomy forecasts of 20%-plus declines evaporated, though a smaller decline had been projected by many market research firms for 2009. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has now reported that worldwide semiconductor sales in 2009 were US$226.3 billion, a decline of 9% from 2008 when sales were US$248.6 billion. Read more >>

Highlighting the very strong rebound in the semiconductor industry, leading foundry, TSMC is raising capital spending to US$4.8 billion in 2010, an increase of approximately 80% over 2009. TSMC raised its CapEx plans three times in 2009 to meet growing demand and high utilization rates across all technology nodes, which began in the second quarter of 2009. Capital spending in 2009 reached US$2.671 billion with US$1.310 billion spent in the fourth quarter. CapEx in 2008 was US$1.886 billion, in comparison. Read more >>

Throwing caution to the wind, as the realisation sets in that memory IC’s will be in short supply throughout 2010 and beyond, Samsung Electronics is planning to significantly increase its capital spending to boost both DRAM and NAND Flash memory production. In a conference call to discuss fourth quarter financial results, Samsungs IR representative noted that the company was “seriously reviewing CapEx for memory.” The leading memory manufacturer had already announced plans to boost production, primarily with advanced node migrations worth US$6 billion for 2010. “Overall CapEx may increase significantly,” the IR representative said in the call. Read more >>

With graphics chip sales up approximately 40% in the fourth quarter, compared to the previous quarter, coupled to a roll-out of new GPU’s at the 40nm node, AMD executives conceded in a confernace call with financial analysts that it could have shipped a lot more chips in the fourth quarter if it had not been capacity constrained at foundry supplier, TSMC. Read more >>