2011 semiconductor industry growth rate is revised down to 5%

In the first half of 2011, IC Insights, the world’s top 20 semiconductor supplier rankings, IC Insights, a market research institute, lowered its forecast for the semiconductor industry’s revenue in 2011 based on the weakness of the global economy. The agency revised down the original 10% forecast for the global semiconductor industry's 2011 revenue growth rate to 5%; in addition, the 2011 IC shipment growth rate was revised down from the original forecast of 10% to 4%.

In the newly released mid-year McClean report, IC Insights enumerated a series of events that triggered the economic downturn, including the 311 Great Japan Earthquake, the political turmoil in the Middle East, the United States’ natural disasters, and the European and U.S. government debt crisis. The half-yearly global economic growth rate was significantly slower than that of the same period of last year, which also weighed on the growth of electronics and semiconductor markets.

"Although the impact of these negative incidents is not very serious, it still slows down the global economic development in the first half of the year," said Bill McClean, president of IC Insights. According to IC Insights' observation, the gross domestic gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate has begun to decline seriously after reaching 4.6% in 2010; the global GDP growth rate in the second quarter was estimated at 3.1%, but the amount was reduced by 33% over the same period in 2010. The difference between % and the 2.5% growth rate representing the economic recession is less than 1%.

IC Insights, however, still said that the global GDP growth rate should improve in the second half of this year, mainly because of the investment demand after the earthquake in Japan and the stronger US economy.

The mid-year McClean report also updated the ranking of the world's top 20 semiconductor suppliers in terms of revenue for the first half of 2011 (in terms of revenue). Among them, the top ranked Intel (Intel) has opened up with the second largest manufacturer Samsung Electronics (Samsung Electronics). The gap between them was 43% higher than that of Samsung in the first half of the year. As a whole, the global sales of the top 20 semiconductor suppliers in the first half of the year increased by 8% over the same period of last year, which is 4 percentage points higher than the global semiconductor industry's growth rate of 4% in the first half of the year.

Also worth mentioning is that graphics chip supplier Nvidia squeezed out its Japanese peer Panasonic and returned to the top 20 semiconductor suppliers in the world, although Nvidia's sales in the first half only increased by 1% over the same period last year.