According to a statistical report released by SEMI International Semiconductor Association on Tuesday, the global semiconductor manufacturing industry showed signs of improvement in the first quarter of 2024. Electronic product sales increased, inventories stabilized, and fab installed capacity increased. Industry growth is expected to be stronger in the second half of the year.

01 Q2 Report

The report shows that in the first quarter of 2024, electronic product sales increased by 1% year-on-year, and are expected to increase by 5% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2024; integrated circuit (IC) sales increased by 22% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2024, with Increased high-performance computing (HPC) chip shipments and continued improvements in storage pricing are expected to increase 21% in the second quarter of 2024. SEMI noted that IC inventory levels stabilized in the first quarter of 2024 and are expected to improve this quarter.

In terms of production capacity, SEMI stated that wafer fab production capacity will continue to grow and is expected to exceed 40 million wafers per quarter (calculated on 300mm wafers). Production capacity increased by 1.2% in the first quarter and is expected to increase by 1.4% in the second quarter of 2024. Mainland China continues to be the region with the highest production capacity growth in the world. However, fab utilization is expected to show little sign of recovery in the first half of 2024. Storage capacity utilization was lower than expected in the first quarter of 2024 due to tight supply controls.

02 Semiconductor Trends

Consistent with fab utilization trends, semiconductor capital expenditures remain conservative. After falling 17% year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2023, capital expenditures continued to fall by 11% in the first quarter of 2024, and SEMI expects to achieve 0.7% growth in the second quarter of 2024. SEMI also projects that storage capital expenditures are expected to increase by 8% in the second quarter of 2024.

Clark Tseng, senior director of market intelligence at SEMI, said: “Demand is recovering in some semiconductor areas, but the recovery rate is uneven. AI chips and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) are among the products with the highest demand currently, leading to investment and capacity expansion in these areas. increase. However, as AI chips rely on a few major suppliers, the impact on IC shipment growth is still limited.”

Boris Metodiev, director of market analysis at TechInsights, said: “Semiconductor demand in the first half of 2024 was mixed, with memory and logic rebounding due to surge in demand for generative artificial intelligence (AI). However, due to the slow recovery of the consumer market and the automotive and industrial Market demand has fallen, and analog, discrete and optoelectronic products have experienced minor adjustments.”

Metodiev said a full recovery is likely in the second half of the year as the expansion of artificial intelligence to the edge is expected to boost consumer demand. Additionally, the automotive and industrial markets are expected to return to growth in the second half of the year as interest rates fall (giving consumers more purchasing power) and inventories decline.

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