Communications ic market to reach $100bn in 2013

The communications ic market is forecast to reach $99.4billion in 2013, $1.4bn higher than the $98bn level expected for the computer ic market. In 2012, the total wireless communications ic market increased by 3%. Although the total dram market declined by 11%, the wireless dram market increased by 14%, driven by strong sales of smartphones. As such, the sector is forecast to surge by 25% this year. IC Insights says flash is still the most prevalent memory type used in communications systems, however. Over 90% of the wireless communications flash memory usage is estimated to be for mobile phones (primarily smartphones). In 2013, the wireless communications flash market (mostly nand flash) is expected to rebound with a 20% increase after registering only 1% growth in 2012. Besides the small wireless sram market, the fastest growing wireless communications ic market in 2012 was the mpu segment, which includes mobile phone application processors. With strong growth in the smartphone portion of the mobile phone market, booming sales of standalone application processors from companies such as Qualcomm and Broadcom are expected to drive the wireless mpu communications ic market to $16.8bn in 2013, more than triple its size in 2009. In contrast to the fast growing communications and automotive ic end use markets, the consumer ic market is forecast to be 5% less in 2013 ($33.3bn) than it was in 2009 ($35.2bn).