SEMI's Senior Director of Industry Research, Zeng Ruiyu, pointed out that the global semiconductor equipment market is expected to grow slightly by 3% compared to last year, reaching $109.5 billion. Next year, driven by advanced logic chips and testing in the field, the equipment market will grow by 16% from this year to a scale of $127.5 billion. Sales of electronic devices in the first half of this year were roughly flat compared to the same period last year, and are expected to grow by 4% year-on-year in the third quarter. The full year is expected to increase by 3% to 5%, slightly lower than the original estimate of 5% to 7%. The capacity utilization rate of wafer fabs bottomed out in the first quarter of this year, gradually recovering starting from the second quarter. It is expected that the capacity utilization rate in the third quarter will reach 70%, and further recovery in the fourth quarter. (Star Market Daily)