IC Insights: China is expected to account for 22% of the foundry market by 2020

IC Insights released the latest report yesterday, which provides analysis on the global IC foundry industry and included a look at the pure-play foundry market by region.

The report pointed out that China accounted for almost all of the growth of the pure foundry market in 2018. In 2019, the U.S./China trade war slowed China’s economic growth but its foundry marketshare still increased by two percentage points to 21%. Moreover, despite the Covid-19 shutdown of China’s economy earlier this year, China’s share of the pure-play foundry market is forecast to be 22% in 2020, 17 percentage points greater than it registered in 2010.

The report also mentioned that Japan is expected to remain the smallest market for pure-play foundry sales with only a 5% share this year (up only two points from its share in 2010). With its foundry market forecast to be worth about $3.6 billion in 2020, Japan’s share of pure-play foundry sales is expected to be about 10% the size of the 2020 Americas pure-play foundry market ($35.1 billion).

IC Insights believes that the Japanese market for pure-play foundry services will increase only slightly in the future. The fabless IC company infrastructure in Japan is small and not expected to grow much over the next five years. Therefore, almost all of the growth in foundry demand in Japan is expected to come from a greater number of Japanese IDMs (e.g., Renesas, Toshiba, Sony, etc.), utilizing IC foundry services.

The rise of HiSilicon and other fabless IC companies in China has elevated the demand for foundry services in that country. Figure 2 shows IC Insights’ listing of the top pure-play foundries’ sales in China in 2018-2020.

Overall, the report shows that pure-play foundry sales in China increased by 10% in 2019 to $11.8 billion, much better than the 1% decline in the total pure-play foundry market last year. Moreover, in 2020, pure-play foundry sales to China are forecast to jump by 26%, seven points better than the 19% increase expected to be registered by the total pure-play foundry market this year.

For more information about this report, please visit https://www.icinsights.com/news/bulletins/China-Forecast-To-Represent-22-Of-The-Foundry-Market-In-2020.