Used semicon equipment market - expected strong growth this year
Amidst the bleak forecasts for the semicon industry for 2008 including the projected decline by 10% in capital spending, a sector expected to post strong growth this year is the used semiconductor equipment market. According to a report from Semiconductor Partners in conjunction with Semicon Research, Used semiconductor equipment market is expected to reach $8 billion in 2009
“As leading edge digital memory and logic manufacturers build 300mm fabs for process technologies of 65nm or less, this will obsolete their 200mm fabs at 130nm or 90nm and some of their 300mm fabs at 90nm,” noted Morry Marshall, Partner – Strategic Technologies at Semiconductor Partners. “Analog and mixed signal manufacturers will have a need for these fabs to meet for expansion to satisfy the growing analog, mixed signal and RF markets. This creates an opportunity for companies that finance, resell or refurbish used equipment.”
IDMs have re-aligned their fab strategies and are going towards fabless or fablite. Plus the ASP declines have catalysed foundries towards the 300mm wafer path, thus giving a boost to the 200mm used equipment market; in particular from foundries in Asia. While on foundries in Asia, Chartered has been on the speculation radar
- Toshiba has recently extended its 2 year collaboration with IBM on 32nm and below to include 32nm bulk CMOS process techno. Chartered with its ties to IBM (Common Platform Alliance) looks set to leverage on this and take away biz with Japanese foundry customers from TSMC and UMC
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Rumors on SMIC being acquired have been afloat since last year. In April ’07, it was rumored to be taken over by venture capital companies. The latest one this year is that Chartered may acquire SMIC.
With the increasing prominence of the foundries in the semicon space and being pitted against the formidable Taiwanese foundries, the others are poised to increase their share of the pie.