The global semiconductor market is expected to reach $620.2 billion in 2024, marking a 17% year-on-year increase, said the World Integrated Circuit Association (WICA), picking up from an 8.5% decline in 2023.
The global market has bottomed out and is now entering an upward phase of the “silicon cycle,” WICA believes.
The explosive growth in global demand for artificial intelligence and high-performance computing (HPC) is driving the market for related computing power and memory chips, and emerging consumer electronics such as smart wearables and smart home devices, following two years of technological improvements and ecosystem development, have produced popular products like the Apple Vision, becoming key drivers of growth in the semiconductor market, said Yang Songqiang, Deputy Secretary-General of WICA China.
China’s market is projected to grow the fastest, followed by the US, with year-on-year growth in the Chinese and US markets expected to reach 20.1% and 18.2%, respectively, Yang said.
As the world’s largest producer of electronic equipment, mainland China remains the largest single market for integrated circuits globally and the 2024 market size is expected to reach $186.5 billion, accounting for 30.1% of the global semiconductor market, he said.
Most integrated circuit trade occurs within the Asia-Pacific region. While countries like the US, Japan, and South Korea maintained net exports of integrated circuits, China and Europe continued to report net imports, and China leads the world in both imports and exports, with import values at $350.1 billion (followed by Singapore at $87.7 billion) and export values at $136.3 billion (followed by Singapore at $104.5 billion), showed the data.
From a product perspective, two integrated circuit categories are expected to show double-digit growth in 2024: logic chips and memory chips, with growth rates of 21% and 61.3%, respectively, and meanwhile, discrete devices, optoelectronic components, sensors, and analog chips are expected to experience declines of 2% to 10%.
In addition, logic chips such as GPUs, FPGAs, and ASICs are projected to grow 4% faster than the industry average, driven by the soaring demand for AI models requiring substantial computing power, the association said.
In terms of applications, computing and communications are expected to be the main growth drivers for the semiconductor industry, with growth rates of 18.4% and 17.9%, the automotive sector ranks third, with a projected growth of 16.7%, and government procurement is the only sector expected to see a decline, with a year-on-year decrease of 20%.
Looking ahead, the industry will be shaped by two major trends: the rise of artificial intelligence and autonomous driving as key growth drivers, and the accelerated development of high-capacity, high-speed memory, and third-generation semiconductors, WICA noted.
In addition to the global competitiveness rankings, the event also announced a list of high-potential domestic semiconductor companies, including Cloudwalk Technology, ACM Research Shanghai, and NCE Power.
