2012 sapphire substrate market will reach $400 million

A new report says that more than half of the 4 million 600 thousand inch sapphire substrate in 2007 went to the Taiwan market in 2.

According to the latest survey Yole DevELoppement report, the production of electronic products with sapphire substrate market size will be $400 million in 2012. Sapphire substrate is mainly used in the production of electronic products in two aspects, on the one hand is the GaN based LED, on the other hand is the mobile phone RF converter. The majority of companies are currently based on 2 inch substrate, of course, there are some companies use 3-4 inch substrate, the manufacturing of the 6 inch substrate has begun. The market for sapphire substrates for LED production in 2007 reached 4 million 610 thousand (by 2 inches).

Asian region, sapphire for LED production is subject to tremendous price pressure. LED manufacturers require 2 inch sapphire substrate price dropped to $17, so that the bare crystal can be sold at 2-3 cents. This situation has forced some sapphire manufacturers to turn to the price advantage of the western countries. But now Taiwan LED manufacturing is still a major supplier of Asian and Russian sapphire suppliers.

Market demand for 4 inch wafers has grown rapidly, while OSRAM, Showa electronics and other large companies have begun to shift some of the larger size of the substrate. Samsung has announced a 6 inch nitride LED product plan, an important sapphire manufacturer Monocrystal also demonstrated a 8 inch C surface sapphire.

Ranked ten in the world's top supplier of sapphire Asia accounted for five seats, accounting for a market share of 67%. At the same time, Asia is also the largest consumer of sapphire, only Taiwan enterprises and Japanese companies were used to 58% of the total sales and 19%.

Despite the development of a number of other technologies in the world, 2 inch sapphire chips remain dominant in LED manufacturing, while Taiwan is a major market. Source: Yole Developpement

KYOCERA (Kyocera) is still the world's largest supplier of sapphire, in 2007 with Namiki, Rubicon ranked the top three. Another Russia Company Atlas (March 2008 was acquired by Monocrystal's Energomera) to become another important supplier of sapphire. In contrast, in April 2008, Honeywell pulled out of the sapphire business, and sold it to a quad group in canada.

Source: China Semiconductor Lighting Network