According to the latest analytics report from IC Insights, the sales of Total foundry this year will be surpassing the US$100-billion mark for the first time in years, and this sales pace will continue increasing at a strong 11.6% average annual growth rate through 2025 and by that year, the sales of total foundry are expected to reach US$151.2 billion.
There has been an increase in demand for advanced processors used in networking and data centre computers, new 5G smartphones, and ICs used in other high-growth market applications such as robotics, self-driving vehicles and driver-assist automation, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and image recognition systems. All this robust demand has fueled the sales of the total foundry to US$107.2 billion in 2021, which is a whopping 23% increase that would match the record growth rate set in 2017.
The analyst reports further explains that the strong growth rate in 2017 was primarily due to the act that Samsung re-classified its System LSI internal transfers as foundry sales, rather than strong organic market growth.
In the coming years, TSMC, UMC, and several speciality foundries are poised to post healthy sales growth this year and they are also heavily investing in new capacity to support anticipated demand for their services during the forecast period.
Samsung accounts for most of the IDM foundry market riding on its amazing list of customers that includes the world’s largest chipmaker Qualcomm. IC Insights forecast that the IDM foundry market will grow 18% to US$20.1 billion in 2021, and reach US$26.1 billion in 2025 resulting in a 5-year CAGR of 9%.
To conclude the report, it’s good news that the IC shortages are expected to continue easing through the fourth quarter of 2021 as capacity additions accelerate, however, the global chip shortage especially for the manufacturing of CPUs and GPUs are still not showing any signs of coming down and the supply chain remains interrupted.
