Semi equipment spending to grow 76% over 2009

Due to the dramatic recovery of the semiconductor industry over the last three quarters that has driven renewed growth for semiconductor capital equipment spending, market research firm Gartner Inc. projects spending for worldwide semiconductor capital equipment to surpass $29.4 billion this year, 76.1 percent higher than $16.7 billion in 2009.

"Spending by the memory and foundry markets, along with the advancement to new technology nodes will drive the semiconductor equipment segment in the first half of 2010. Quarterly growth will see a slight slowdown in the second half before capacity additions start ramping up the equipment industry again going into 2011,” according to Gartner research VP Jim Walker, in a statement.

Following the significant declines last year, Gartner believes all segments of the semiconductor capital equipment market will show extremely strong double-digit growth this year. In the worldwide wafer fab equipment (WFE) segment, spending declined 46.4 percent in 2009, a slight improvement from the Q4 2009 forecast, and will grow 76.6 percent from 2009, driven by aggressive technology upgrades, especially for the leading memory companies, Gartner said.

Utilization rates continue to be in the mid 80s to high 80s for total utilization and in the low 90s for leading edge, with leading-edge utilization projected to reach the mid-90 percent range by the end of the year, which will start to drive stronger capacity additions in 2011.

In the worldwide packaging and assembly equipment (PAE) market segment, after declining 40 percent in 2009, spending is expected to increase by more than 75 percent this year, with decent PAE market growth expected through 2012. Gartner said the modest decline expected for 2013 is based on a more traditional inventory-based market contraction.

For the worldwide automated test equipment (ATE) market segment, Gartner believes this year will mark the first positive growth year since 2006. After bottoming out in Q1 2009, the ATE market has realized substantial quarterly gains and is expected to grow by more than 70 percent this year, the market research company said. Growth is expected to continue during the next several quarters as device demand improves, and Gartner's 2010 growth expectations are driven heavily by the expected transition to DDR3 memory devices.

"The semiconductor equipment industry will experience a very strong growth spurt in 2010, as we emerge from a very costly recession, and this growth is expected to continue throughout 2012. However, we expect this upturn to be one of the first in which the peak revenue in capital equipment does not surpass previous growth cycles, which may well help to mitigate the boom/bust scenario that we have seen in the past,” Walker concluded.

Gartner