The production value of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry this year is expected to fall 12.7 percent from a year earlier to NT$4.22 trillion (US$132.1 billion), the Industrial Technology Research Institute’s (ITRI) Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center (IEK) forecast on Monday last week.
The IEK projection represented a downgrade from an earlier estimate of a 12.1 percent fall to NT$4.24 trillion issued in May, which the center said was due to weaker-than-expected global demand from end users resulting from high inflation and aggressive interest rate hikes worldwide.
The output value of the pure-play wafer foundry business, the largest segment of the semiconductor industry, is expected to fall 11.3 percent to NT$2.38 trillion, a downgrade from NT$2.43 trillion estimated in May, the report said.
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The output value of memorychip suppliers is expected to fall 23.6 percent to NT$180 billion, the steepest decline in any of the major segments in the industry, while IC packaging and testing service providers are expected to see their production value fall by 18.5 percent and 13.0 percent to NT$379.7 billion and NT$190.3 billion respectively, the center projected.
IC designers’ output value is expected to drop 11.6 percent to about NT$1.09 trillion, it said.
The local semiconductor industry generated NT$1.01 trillion in output value in the second quarter this year, down 18.0 percent from a year earlier, but up 0.7 percent from a quarter earlier, the report said.
The production value of pure-play wafer foundry operators was NT$564.7 billion, down 13.3 percent from a year earlier and down 3.8 percent from a quarter earlier.
Memorychip suppliers had a production value of NT$42.8 billion in the second quarter, down 37.3 percent from a year earlier, but up 5.4 percent from a quarter earlier, while IC designers totaled NT$268.5 billion in output, down 22.2 percent year-on-year, but up 11.9 percent quarter-on-quarter.
The production value of IC packaging firms for the second quarter totaled NT$92.7 billion, down 19.4 percent from a year earlier and down 1.4 percent from a quarter earlier, while IC testing services generated NT$46.3 billion in output, down 19.5 percent from a year earlier and down 0.4 percent from a quarter earlier.
In the third quarter, the industry’s traditional peak season, the output of the local semiconductor industry is expected to grow 7.5 percent from the second quarter to NT$1.09 trillion, the IEK forecast.
Some IC designers, however, in particular in the display driver IC design business, appeared downbeat about the quarter and were unsure whether they would benefit from traditional peak-season effects, with Novatek Microelectronics Corp (聯詠科技) expecting its third-quarter revenue to fall 4-7 percent from the second quarter, while Himax Technologies Inc (奇景光電) said its third-quarter sales could stay little changed from the second quarter or fall by up to 7 percent.
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