Semicoductor Market Outlook in 2011 - 2012

[nicholaschoong]

Hi All,

Frankly speaking, I ended up in this semiwiki was particularly 'drawn' in by this good article linked below.

Semiconductor and EDA Forecasts 2011 / 2012

I would like to take a risk here to post a new topic to see if members here would like to share their on-going 'feeling' or comments on the current demand and supply situation.

We are in month 1 of 2011. I myself is in this semiconductor related business, where at this moment, the lead time of the product delivery seems to be dragged long not by the wafer supplies, but due to backend with specific packages. Is that what you guys are seeing?

It would be interesting to hear more opinion and experience from members here too. My own motivation is to gather the on-going demand and supply status, the closed in 1 - 2 months back, versus to the forecast by the gurus. That would be interesting to see how the actual curve continue to develop along the way into 2011

 

[CharlieD]

By Gurus do you mean Gartner and those other old guys? I think you will do better to listen to actual semiconductor people so maybe this is a good place. People who I have spoken to and people who I work with are very concerned about getting wafers for 40nm and 28nm this year. Millions of tablets will be sold this year and those are 40nm devices. Smartphones too, Androids will beat iPhones this I think. FPGA and GPUs will move to 28nm this year so those wafers will be sold out by year end. I also hear concern about 28nm yield not ramping for another year like 40nm did.

The thing is that these new toys (tablets and smartphones) have a limited shelf life, maybe 2-3 years if that. Not like PCs which lasted 4+ years? I still have a Windows XP machine at home. So the semiconductor industry has a much shorter business cycle than before with more diversified products and shorter lifespan. That is going to change supply/demand significantly. Don't you think?