More Downside than Upside Risk to IC Insights’ 2016 IC Market Growth Forecast

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IC Insights has always believed that an IC market forecast is essentially useless unless one knows the assumptions behind it.  Including stock market and financial analysts, there are at least 15 entities that release IC market forecasts.  One way that IC Insights attempts to separate itself from the “pack” is by always including a detailed analysis of the assumptions behind its IC market forecasts.  In that way, our clients can fully understand the forecast and can make their own intelligent assessment of whether they believe the forecast looks good or, in their opinion, is too low or too high.

IC Insights’ assumptions for its 2016 IC market forecast of 4% growth.  As depicted, the most likely 2016 IC market scenario is for 2%-6% growth.  Worldwide GDP is forecast to increase by 2.7% in 2016, 0.2 percentage points greater than the 2.5% growth rate registered in 2015, which is expected to drive a 2% increase in electronic system sales (four points higher than the 2% decline in 2015).  Overall, IC Insights believes the correlation between worldwide GDP growth and IC market growth in 2016 will be very tight, as it has been since 2010.

IC industry capacity utilization rates are forecast to be in the low-90s percent range (with 300mm fabrication facility utilization expected to be in the mid-90s) in 2016.  Moreover, IC unit volume growth is forecast to grow 5% in 2016, slightly better than the 4% increase in IC unit shipments registered in 2015, as servers and smartphones experience continued good demand.

A market forecast essentially comes down to unit and ASP growth.  With the expectations for a relatively healthy 5% increase in IC unit volume growth, coupled with a 1% decline in IC ASPs, a mid- to low-single-digit growth rate in the 2016 IC industry currently appears to be the most likely outcome.