South Korea surpasses Japan to become second largest semiconductor power

According to the research report of IC Insights, a market analysis agency, the United States continues to lead the market with a 53% share of the global semiconductor chip market, which has accounted for more than half of the market share for three consecutive years.

Up to now, except for the United States, only the Japanese market in the 1980s accounted for more than 50%. However, with the establishment of Sematech (consortium of semiconductor devices and semiconductor manufacturing equipment factories) and the bursting of the Japanese economic bubble, the initiative of semiconductor technology was again Return to the United States.

IC Insights said that due to the strong growth of ON Semiconductor, Qualcomm, Skyworks, LSI and Intel, the semiconductor market share in the United States rose by 3% in 2011.

Japan and South Korea have a market share of 16%, but South Korea has a slight advantage. This is the first time it has surpassed Japan and has become the second largest semiconductor market. In Europe, it was 7%, and in Taiwan it was 6%. The increase of Hass & Spreadtrum in mainland China was 0.2% to 1.6% compared to 2010.

Although Samsung and Hynix continue to be affected by the downturn in the storage market, South Korea’s market share still rose by two percentage points compared to 2009.

Taiwanese companies saw market share decline due to weak DRAM market. The Chinese mainland continues to attract foreign investment to set up factories in China, including TSMC, Intel and Samsung.