Asia-Pacific To Top 2016 Regional IC Sales In Major System Categories

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Asia-Pacific’s grip as the dominant market for IC sales is forecast to strengthen in 2016 with the region expected to account for 61.0% of the $282.0 billion IC market this year, based on analysis published in IC Insights’ mid-year Update to the 2016 IC Market Drivers report.  The forecast calls for another small gain in total IC marketshare in 2016 after Asia-Pacific held 57.7% share in 2013, 58.4% in 2014, and 60.5% in 2015. The Asia-Pacific region is particularly dominant with regard to IC marketshare in the communications and computer categories, and to a lesser extent in the consumer and industrial categories (Figure 1).  In 2016, IC Insights expects the Asia-Pacific region to surpass Europe and become the largest region for automotive ICs for the first time, as China continues to account for a large and growing portion of new car shipments.  That will leave only the Government/Military end use segment where Asia-Pacific does not have top IC marketshare—a condition that is forecast to hold through 2019.

IC Insights’ Update to the IC Market Drivers 2016 report forecasts total IC usage by system type through the year 2019.  Highlights from the forecast include the following items:

• The Asia-Pacific region is forecast to increase its share of the IC market to 62.3% in 2019, from 61.0% forecast for 2016.  Over the same time, North American is also forecast to increase marketshare to 23.8%.  Conversely, Europe and Japan are expected to lose IC marketshare through 2019. Japan’s IC marketshare is forecast to slip to 5.5% and Europe is forecast to slide to 8.3% in 2019.
• The two fastest growing end-use markets for ICs through 2019 are forecast to be the automotive and industrial/medical segments, having 2015-2019 CAGRs of 8.0% and 7.1%, respectively.  Though having the greatest CAGR through 2019, the automotive IC market is not expected to account for more than 8.0% of total IC sales any time through the forecast period.
• After slumping to only $10.6 billion in 2009, the automotive IC market is forecast to reach nearly 3x that amount ($28.0 billion) in 2019.
• The two largest end-use markets (computer and communications) are forecast to account for 73.7% of the total IC market in 2019, almost the same as the 73.9% share they are forecast to hold in 2016.
• In 2016, analog ICs are forecast to account for the greatest share of IC sales within the automotive (45%) and industrial (50%) segments; logic devices are expected to account for the greatest share of IC sales in communications (41%), consumer (41%), and government/military (32%) applications, and microprocessors are forecast to account for the greatest share (42%) of IC sales in the computer segment.