SEMI: Global semiconductor materials market output value reached US$43.4 billion in 2015

The Semiconductor Industry Association (SEMI) released the latest statistics, pointing out that the global semiconductor material market output value was US$43.4 billion in 2015, of which Taiwan was US$9.41 billion, ranking the largest market for six consecutive years; while South Korea, Mainland China, North America and Europe all saw slight growth, Japan experienced a decline of 6.28%.

SEMI believes that since many important semiconductor material suppliers are Japanese companies, the sharp depreciation of the Japanese yen in 2015 was a major factor leading to the decline in the global semiconductor material market.

If wafer production materials and packaging materials are separated, the global market size of wafer production materials in 2015 was US$24.1 billion, and the market size of packaging materials was US$19.8 billion, down 1% and 2% from 2014 respectively. However, it is worth noting that in the packaging material part, if wire bonding packaging materials are excluded, the overall packaging material market size is flat. SEMI pointed out that this phenomenon shows that copper wire bonding packaging with a lower unit price continues to replace gold wire bonding packaging, thus affecting the size of the overall packaging material market.