The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) has raised its forecast for 2021 to growth of 19.7 percent. Growth this year will be driven primarily by Europe and Asia, after the USA took over in 2020. However, these remain by far the largest market.
Forecast increased massively
The WSTS growth forecast has almost doubled within the last three months. In March of this year they were still assuming growth for the year 2021 of “only” 10.9 percent; today the figure stands at 19.7 percent. The prospects for almost all companies in the semiconductor industry are bright. The growth is rather capped by bottlenecks in materials and certain small components, which suddenly become part of a very large stage, but whose demand they cannot meet.
The bottom line is that there is no area that will not grow this year. The association is already predicting growth for 2022, significantly weaker than this year, but still very good at almost nine percent. The memory business in particular is seen as a major growth driver, which is currently recovering from a low of previous years – with rising prices.
The industry quantifies global growth this year with a volume of almost 87 billion US dollars, which will appear in sales for the companies involved. The bottom line is that by the end of the year the industry is expected to be more than 527 billion US dollars, after 440 billion US dollars in 2020. For the coming year, the players are predicting growth of almost 9 percent to a total of 573 billion US dollars. However, as the clear correction in the last three months has shown, these forecasts must be treated with great caution and can quickly turn in one direction or the other.