The annual production value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry is expected to surpass NT$4 trillion (US$143.6 billion) for the first time this year, the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center (IEK) said yesterday, bolstered by robust demand for emerging technologies worldwide and a booming global stay-at-home economy.
Local semiconductor output is now projected to grow 24.7 percent from a year earlier to NT$4.01 trillion, the market information advisory unit of the Industrial Technology Research Institute said.
IEK had in May forecast that output this year would increase 18.1 percent to NT$3.8 trillion.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
A persistent global chip shortage has boosted the pricing power of Taiwan’s leading chipmakers, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) and Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進).
This has allowed TSMC, UMC and many other IC companies to report record sales in the second quarter, usually a slow season for chip sales, and they are expected to continue that performance in the third quarter, the industry’s peak period, analysts have said.
The IEK forecast that the local semiconductor industry would see quarterly increases in shipments in the second half of the year, paving the way for robust full-year growth in output.
Chip production totaled NT$986.3 billion in the second quarter of the year, up 9 percent from a quarter earlier, beating the IEK’s forecast of a 2.6 percent increase, amid high global demand for Internet communications gadgets and automotive electronics devices.
Among the four major segments of the semiconductor industry, IC design reported the highest sequential growth of 17.9 percent to NT$306.9 billion, IEK data showed.
The IC testing service segment came in second, with a 6.3 percent quarterly increase in production value to NT$49 billion, followed by the IC manufacturing segment with 5.7 percent growth to NT$528.4 billion and the IC packaging services segment, which posted a 3.7 percent rise in output to NT$102 billion, the data showed.
The IEK forecast that the four major IC segments would see a combined output of NT$1.05 trillion in the third quarter, up 6.8 percent from the previous quarter.
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