Taiwan is to retain its position as the top spender on semiconductor front-end equipment and facilities next year, with spending expected to increase 4.2 percent year-on-year to US$24.9 billion, international trade group SEMI said yesterday.
The spending forecast matches an expected recovery in global semiconductor equipment and facilities investment next year, it said.
International equipment spending is to return to growth next year, SEMI said in a report, forecasting 21 percent growth to US$92 billion.
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA-EFE
The expansion would manly be driven by robust demand for semiconductors in the automotive and high-performance computing segments, the association said.
“This quarter’s SEMI World Fab Forecast update offers our first look ahead to 2024, highlighting the steady global expansion of fab capacity to support future semiconductor industry growth driven by the automotive and computing segments and a host of emerging applications,” SEMI president and CEO Ajit Manocha said in the report.
South Korea is expected to be the second-largest spender, with investment surging 41.5 percent annually to US$21 billion next year, the report said.
China is forecast to rank third, with spending little changed from about US$16 billion this year, it said, citing the effects of US controls on exports of advanced chipmaking equipment to China.
The US is projected to retain fourth spot, with spending soaring 23.9 percent year-on-year to US$11 billion, which would be an all-time high, the report said.
Europe and the Middle East are forecast to log record investments next year, increasing spending 36 percent to US$8.2 billion, it said.
Fab equipment spending in Japan and Southeast Asia is expected to increase to US$7 billion and US$3 billion respectively, the report said.
The global semiconductor industry’s capacity is forecast to grow 5.6 percent annually next year, after an expansion of 4.8 percent this year, SEMI said.
With more suppliers providing foundry services amid increasing global capacity, the foundry segment is expected to lead the semiconductor expansion next year, with spending growing 12.4 percent annually to US$48.8 billion, it said.
This year, foundry service providers are expected to curtail their spending by 12.1 percent to US$43.4 billion, SEMI said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, cut its expenditures for this year to between US$32 billion and US$36 billion from record spending of US$36.3 billion last year, citing near-term uncertainties.
TSMC said that it registered aggravated weakness in demand for chips made on 7-nanometer nodes, as PC and smartphone vendors led the tech sector in posting inventory corrections and delayed new product launches.
Memorychip makers are to significantly increase investment to US$28.2 billion next year from US$17.1 billion this year, SEMI said.
This year, memorychip makers are to slash spending 44.4 percent annually, it said.
Spending on semiconductor manufacturing equipment and facilities this year is to contract 23 percent year-on-year to US$76 billion from a record-high of US$98 billion last year, it added.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS