Online information source for semiconductor professionals

Despite the birth of the iPad and sales of 17.4 million in 2010, the microprocessor market share hardly changed last year with Intel dominating the market with 81% share and AMD picking up the crumbs at 11.4%. As a trend goes, Intel picks up a tiny bit of share each year while AMD seems to lose a tiny bit of share each year. Read more >>

Market research firm, DRAMeXchange has noted that the Japanese disaster led to a panic surge in spot prices for NAND Flash. Japan is home to Toshiba and SanDisk’s JV fab operations dedicated to NAND production. However, DRAMeXchange noted that global NAND Flash bit supply by would only be reduced by less than 4% in 2Q11. Read more >>

Market research firm IHS iSuppli believes that the semiconductor supply disruptions caused by the natural disaster in Japan and the infrastructure problems that are ongoing are bad, they could have been worse if wasn’t for the fact that global semiconductor inventories were at high levels before the events of last Friday. Read more >>

Update 1. Donations in response to the Japanese earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit the country on Friday March the 11th, 2011 are starting to appear from semiconductor related firms. Read more >>

Market demand dynamics, across all major sectors resulted in worldwide semiconductor sales reaching US$25.5 billion in January, up 1.5% compared to December when sales reached US$25.2 billion, according to the SIA. Though cautious to claim this is a significant development that could see greater than projected growth in 2011, the SIA acknowledge that the industry had experienced impressive growth over the last 12-months. Sales increased by 14.0% from US$22.4 billion in January 2010.  Read more >>

IC sales declined the least amount in January this year than any other in the last 21 years, according to IC Insights. The seasonally down period potentially sets a trend for the rest of the year. The market research firm believes that barring oil prices continuing above US$100 per barrel the semiconductor industry could be tracking double digit growth in 2011. Read more >>

The latest SEMI World Fab Forecast report follows in the footsteps Fabtech reported last week, concerning Applied Materials own projection of significant CapEx growth for fab equipment in 2011. The new report projects fab capital equipment to increase 28% over 2010 levels and 22% growth with respect to spending on fab projects worldwide that includes construction, facilities, and equipping. Read more >>

The significant capital spending plans already announced by some of the major IC manufacturers could result in CapEx reaching between US$34 and US$36 billion, according Mike Splinter, chairman and chief executive officer of Applied Materials. With the recent massive increase in spending, particularly in logic IDM (Intel) and foundry (TSMC, GlobalFoundries, Samsung), which is driven by both capacity expansions and technology node migrations, Applied Materials is one of the key equipment suppliers to benefit from this latest CapEx wave. Read more >>

SMIC turned to profit for 2010, the first time in five years as sales reached US$1.556 billion for the full year. The Chinese foundry said it would spend approximately US$1 billion on capital expenditures this year, mainly to meet the high demand for advanced node capacity. SMIC noted that despite expansion plans it couldn’t meet demand for 65nm processing this year. SMIC noted that its 300mm fab in Beijing would increase capacity from 23,300wspm to 40,000wspm by the end of 2011. Equipment will be purchased for that expansion. Read more >>

Highlighting that keeping supply and demand in balance is never something the semiconductor industry is likely to gain a controlling hand over, market research firm, IHS iSuppli is warning that during the fourth quarter of 2010, global inventories held by semiconductor suppliers increased to their highest level in two-and-a-half years. Concern over inventory build was amplified should industry demand growth ease. Read more >>