A government-sponsored market information agency has raised its forecast for production value growth in Taiwan’s integrated circuit (IC) sector for this year due to an increase in demand for IC design chips and a rebound in memorychip prices.
The Industrial Technology Research Institute’s Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center (IEK, 產業經濟與趨勢研究中心) expects the output value of Taiwan’s IC sector to rise 7.2 percent this year to NT$2.43 trillion (US$77.38 billion).
That is stronger than the 1 percent increase the IEK projected in May on the output value growth for the nation’s IC sector.
The IEK said the upward revision is merited after it took into account the fast-changing IC market conditions. In particular, MediaTek Inc (聯發科), which specializes in smartphone chip design, gave reasons for higher expectations by recently upgrading its sales forecast.
MediaTek’s introduction of advanced smartphone chips, such as the Helio X225, the Helio X20 and Helio P10, have helped the company gain a more than 50 percent share of the Chinese smartphone chip market, where demand remains solid.
MediaTek raised its own forecast for consolidated sales growth for this year to 25 percent, from an earlier estimate of a 10 percent increase because of rising demand from China and other emerging markets, and the IEK followed the company’s lead.
It forecast output of the IC design sector to rise 13.3 percent this year from a year earlier to NT$671.5 billion, up from a previous projection of 5.8 percent growth.
Prices of DRAM chips have also rebounded since the end of the second quarter as inventory adjustments came to an end, prompting buyers to rebuild their stocks, the IEK said.
The IEK forecast that the output value of Taiwan’s memory chip segment is expected to fall 18.9 percent year-on-year to NT$179 billion this year, but the projected decline was down from an earlier forecast of a 29.7 percent fall.
As for the IC manufacturing sector, the IEK said production value is expected to grow 5.7 percent this year from a year earlier to NT$1.3 trillion.
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