The personal computer (PC) market has been the single biggest driver of semiconductor sales for years, but has recently declined for the sixth year in a row. At the same time, the semiconductor industry is expected to have its best sales year in 2017, with the strongest growth momentum coming from the automotive market, which will continue until 2021.
PC is no longer a killer application of semiconductors, instead, many new applications continue to emerge. These include the automotive semiconductor market, which has been a strong market for the semiconductor industry for many years, and automotive semiconductors have rapidly become the most important market for the semiconductor industry as the number of semiconductors in each vehicle increases.
In fact, market research firm IC Insights predicts that the automotive semiconductor market will be the strongest market for chip terminal applications at least in 2021. According to the company's forecast, sales of automotive electronic systems will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.4 per cent between 2016 and 2021.
IC Insights points out that this growth comes from the growing demand for automotive electronic systems, as well as the increasing focus on self-driving (self-driving) cars, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, as well as on-board safety, convenience and environmental features, not to mention interest in electric vehicles (EV).
As a result, 20171116_ICInsights_NT01P1 predicts that automotive IC sales will increase by 22% in 2017 and continue to grow by 16% next year.
The global electronic system market is expected to reach US $1.49 trillion in 2017, of which the automobile market accounts for 9.1%, up slightly from 8.9% in 2015 and 9% in 2016. IC Insights noted that the share of cars in the global electronic system has been increasing slightly in recent years and is expected to maintain this slow growth until 2021, when sales of automotive electronics will account for 9.8 per cent of the global electronic system market.
IC Insights said that although more and more electronic systems are being added to the car, the share of automotive terminal applications will far exceed the current share of the overall electronic system by 2021 due to the pricing pressure of IC and electronic systems.
According to IC Insights's latest semiconductor industry driver report, the CAGR of industrial electronic systems is expected to reach 4.6 per cent by 2021. The company says the growth of applications such as robots, wearable health devices and systems that promote the Internet of things have all helped drive growth in this field.
Other CAGR forecasts listed in the report include 4.2 per cent growth in communications and about 2.8 per cent in consumer electronics. IC Insights also pointed out that of all the major semiconductor driving forces in 2021, the CAGR of the PC market will be the lowest.