Global chipmakers are expected to increase spending on new equipment by about 12 percent over last year to US$44.33 billion this year, with the highest amount of spending again expected to come from Taiwanese chipmakers, a report released by Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) said yesterday.
This year will likely see the highest spending by chipmakers since 2000, when firms spent a record US$48 billion on new equipment, SEMI said.
Last year, global equipment expenditures grew by 150 percent to US$39.55 billion from the previous year.
After peaking this year, global spending on equipment could contract by 1.2 percent year-on-year to US$43.79 billion next year, SEMI forecast.
“Semiconductor equipment manufacturers will still see a double-digit increase in spending for 2011 following a phenomenal recovery year with triple-digit growth in 2010,” Stanley Myers, president and CEO of SEMI, said in the report. “We expect worldwide equipment sales to remain at high levels in 2012.”
SEMI projected that spending on wafer processing equipment is expected to rise to an all-time high at US$35.1 billion this year, up 18.8 percent from last year’s US$29.54 billion. SEMI did not say weather the main reason for the increase was the escalating race to increase capacity after Intel Corp, Samsung Electronics Co and GlobalFoundries Inc announced that they enter the contract chip manufacturing business.
This year, local chipmakers, including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), are expected to budget US$10.62 billion for new equipment, down 5 percent from last year’s US$11.19 billion, the report said.
TSMC planned to allocate US$7.8 billion for new equipment this year, the highest in the company’s 24-year history. However, analysts such as Daiwa Capital Markets’ Eric Chen (陳慧明) have projected that TSMC would cut spending by between 10 percent and 15 percent amid fragile demand for end products such as mobile phones.
Next year, Taiwanese firms are expected increase spending slightly by 0.4 percent to US$10.66 billion, which would help Taiwan safeguard its position as the world’s biggest semiconductor equipment market, SEMI said.
China has claimed a breakthrough in developing homegrown chipmaking equipment, an important step in overcoming US sanctions designed to thwart Beijing’s semiconductor goals. State-linked organizations are advised to use a new laser-based immersion lithography machine with a resolution of 65 nanometers or better, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in an announcement this month. Although the note does not specify the supplier, the spec marks a significant step up from the previous most advanced indigenous equipment — developed by Shanghai Micro Electronics Equipment Group Co (SMEE, 上海微電子) — which stood at about 90 nanometers. MIIT’s claimed advances last
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