The nation’s integrated circuit (IC) industry’s production value is forecast to rise 15.4 percent to NT$5.12 trillion (US$163.1 billion) this year, the Taiwan Semiconductor Industry Association (TSIA) said yesterday.
The increase is expected to outpace the global semiconductor industry’s annual growth of 13.1 percent, the TSIA said in a report commissioned by the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center of the Industrial Technology Research Institute.
Following inventory adjustments last year, the semiconductor industry should regain its growth momentum this year, driven by demand for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing, the association said.
Photo: Bloomberg
Global semiconductor sales are expected to total US$595.8 billion this year, it said.
Taiwan’s chipmaking industry would grow 16.6 percent to NT$3.1 trillion, with foundry, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), rising by a similar pace to NT$2.91 trillion, it said.
The IC design sector would see production value rise 14.6 percent to NT$1.26 trillion, while IC packaging is to surge 11 percent to NT$436.2 billion and IC testing is to grow 12.6 percent to NT$214.6 billion, the TSIA said.
In the fourth quarter of last year, global semiconductor sales totaled US$146 billion, up 8.4 percent quarter-on-quarter and 11.6 percent year-on-year, the association said, citing World Semiconductor Trade Statistics.
However, sales volume over the period slumped 5.8 percent sequentially and 11.5 percent annually to 223.4 billion units.
The average selling price was US$0.653, up 15 percent quarter-on-quarter and 26.1 percent year-on-year, it said.
Globally last year, semiconductor sales fell 8.2 percent year-on-year to US$526.8 billion, the TSIA said.
By country, sales dropped 5.3 percent in the US, 3.1 percent in Japan and 14 percent in China, but Europe bucked the trend, increasing 4 percent, it said.
In Taiwan last year, IC industry production value fell 10.2 percent to US$139.2 billion, the Industrial Economics and Knowledge Center said.
Using methodology from the US General Services Administration to quantify the contribution of the semiconductor industry to the nation’s economy, the TSIA found that it constituted 13.1 percent of GDP in 2022, or NT$2.98 trillion.
Compared with its contribution of NT$790 billion in 2012, the sector has contributed 3.75 times more over the past decade with an annual compound growth rate of 14.1 percent, the association said.
This shows that the nation’s semiconductor industry has transformed from a “technological follower to a leader,” creating economic value that is not easy to duplicate elsewhere, it added.
NO RECIPROCITY: Taipei has called for cross-strait group travel to resume fully, but Beijing is only allowing people from its Fujian Province to travel to Matsu, the MAC said The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday criticized an announcement by the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism that it would lift a travel ban to Taiwan only for residents of China’s Fujian Province, saying that the policy does not meet the principles of reciprocity and openness. Chinese Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism Rao Quan (饒權) yesterday morning told a delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in a meeting in Beijing that the ministry would first allow Fujian residents to visit Lienchiang County (Matsu), adding that they would be able to travel to Taiwan proper directly once express ferry
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has