China's IC industry has become the focus of growth in the Asian chip industry

In Singapore Semicon 2006 workshop analysts and industry representatives believe that the global semiconductor industry is expected to steady growth for a period of time, of which a large part driven by emerging economies in asia.

International semiconductor equipment and materials (SEMI) president and CEO Stanley Myers said, SEMI expects the overall market expansion this year will be as high as 10%, mainly driven by such as mobile phone and digital audio players and other consumer products growing demand. SEMI predicts that the global IC equipment market will grow by about $3 billion 120 million this year to $36 billion 120 million. Chip material market is expected to increase from $34 billion 510 million to $31 billion 380 million. Asia will become the leader, growing more than the global average. SEMI said China's semiconductor materials and equipment market is expected to grow by more than 20%.

Gartner Philip, vice president of semiconductor research Koh said the company expects the industry in line with the annual growth rate in the next 5 years, growth of 7.9%, the surge demand for 3G phones and storage equipment will make up PC market saturation". China has become the world's leading chip market, will continue to grow, by 2010 will account for nearly 60% of the entire industry, Koh noted. Such as Taiwan and Singapore, China is relatively developed areas, it is expected to remain relatively stable". In addition to manufacturing operations to China, Koh also said that the growing number of major companies in Taiwan will also shift R & D activities to the mainland. Although China's IC and system design industry is still a problem, Gartner is still expected to continue to invest in electronic manufacturing in China, but also more efforts to develop its own standards and technology.

STATS ChipPAC chief strategy officer Scott Jewler pointed out that the global industry is currently in its fifth year of expansion, it seems to have to shake off the early stages of prosperity and the shadow of the low cycle. Less and less technology and financial resources to invest in the company's 300mm wafer Fab or cutting-edge packaging solutions, resulting in capacity double orders less, and irrational capital investment reduction". But Jewler said that more advanced consumer equipment and technology integration will also face many challenges.

At present, the choice of enterprises will be minimal, because few companies have to manufacture such as mobile phones and other equipment needed for intellectual property rights, only the choice of cooperation. In addition, the integrated design and manufacturing (IDM) process is becoming increasingly complex. Smaller niche players in the market, the history of many industrial innovation is the source of survival in the capital intensive market has also been questioned. IP copyright protection and industry standards will become the next 3 to 5 years, a more prominent issue, especially with manufacturing to China and other regions.

Jewler predicts that by 2015, with less than 45nm of IC and the use of materials such as nanowires and carbon nanotubes, nano technology will dominate the semiconductor market. He also predicted that there will be a 450mm wafer fab, although the plant cost as much as $10 billion. He also suggested to focus on the Chinese background of IDM, he pointed out that some of them have been in the forefront of competition, China's industry is also trying to replace the imported chips into local design."