Semiconductor Demand Drivers Increase Across the Board in 2018

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Semiconductors enable a wide variety of products, from smartphones and computers to cars and industrial equipment. Newly released data on 2018 semiconductor sales by broad product category, known as “end-use,” show sales increased across all categories, while end-use category shares remained remarkably stable from 2017. This is according to the 2018 annual Semiconductor End-Use Survey from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization.

According to the survey, global sales in 2018 increased in all six major semiconductor end-use categories. The overall global semiconductor market grew by 13.7% in 2018.

The ranking of end-use by share in 2018 was: communication (32.4%), computer (30.8%), consumer (12.3%), industrial (12%), automotive (11.5%), and government (1%). This order remained unchanged from 2017.

Last year marked the fifth year in a row that communications represented the largest end-use driver for semiconductor sales. As in 2017, communications and PC/computer remained the two largest end-use categories by far in 2018, combining for 63.2% of the value of all semiconductors sold in 2018. The share of these two categories, however, declined slightly from 62.3% in 2017. The other three major end-use categories—consumer, industrial, and automotive—maintained shares similar to their 2017 amounts.

The 2018 Semiconductor End-Use Survey provides end-use sales data by major end application for all the major semiconductor product sub-segments as well as by major geographic regions, including China, the Americas, Japan, and the EU. Furthermore, the survey presents tables with end-use shares by%age and by total sales in dollars. With almost 2,000 data points in the entire report, the 2018 Semiconductor End-Use Survey is a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding semiconductor market trends by end-use.