The nation’s IC industry is expected to see a mild annual growth of 2.4 percent this year, after posting a 2.8 percent annual increase in the sector’s overall revenue last year, the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center (IEK) said yesterday.
Revenue for the IC industry is expected to expand from last year’s NT$2.26 trillion to NT$2.32 trillion (US$67.34 billion to US$69.13 billion) this year, the IEK said.
Despite a milder increase in revenue, the IEK forecast the IC industry’s growth momentum to continue to outpace the global IC industry’s estimated annual growth of 1.7 percent this year.
That would mark the fifth consecutive year in which Taiwan’s IC industry outperformed the international IC industry in terms of revenue growth, according to the IEK’s statistics.
Within the nation’s IC industry, the IEK said it forecast the IC design sector’s revenue would expand by 4.6 percent to NT$620 billion, compared with NT$592.7 billion recorded a year ago.
Both IC packaging’s and IC testing’s revenue growth are expected to swing from annual decline to annual increase this year, with IC packaging to climb 2.3 percent year-on-year from last year’s annual drop of 1.9 percent and IC testing’s revenue to surge 3.5 percent annually from the annual decline of 4.7 percent recorded last year, the IEK said.
Taiwan’s IC memorychip revenues are expected to plunge 22.3 percent from a year ago, which would weaken the overall IC manufacturing sector’s revenues growth to only 1.3 percent annually compared with a 4.9 percent growth in a year earlier, it said.
Last quarter, the IC industry’s revenue totaled NT$563.2 billion, down 4.6 percent year-on-year and 1.9 percent quarter-on-quarter, IEK statistics showed.
While the revenue of Taiwan’s IC manufacturing, IC packaging and IC testing companies all contracted last quarter from a year ago, the nation’s IC designers still saw an annual increase in sales last quarter, the IEK said.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs has been evaluating since November last year the feasibility of lifting a ban on Chinese investments in Taiwan’s IC design companies in a bid to assist local companies in gaining competitiveness in the Chinese market.
The ministry is to convene a public hearing over the issue at the beginning of next month and at a cross-ministry meeting in the middle of next month, a ministry official said.
The ministry is scheduled to submit an evaluation report on the issue to the legislature for approval at the end of next month, the official said.
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