Foundries revenues increasing beyond expectations
Renewed demand for consumer oriented electronics products has led iSuppli to raise its 2010 revenue forecast for pure play semiconductor foundries.
"During the first three quarters of 2010, foundries were under intense pressure to meet customer demand," said Len Jelinek, director and chief analyst for semiconductor manufacturing at iSuppli. "The pressure is leading to increased revenue, as consumer spending has come back with a vengeance following a dramatic downturn in the fourth quarter of 2008 and for all of 2009."
As a result, iSuppli has raised its revenue forecast for all semiconductor foundry activity for 2010 to $29.8billion, up 42.3% from 2009. By 2014, the company believes pure play foundry revenue will reach $45.9bn.
Meanwhile, iSuppli continues to predict that foundries such as TSMC (pictured) will increase their expenditure on capital equipment by 123% in 2010. Much of this spending is going toward developing advanced semiconductor manufacturing processes. Because of this, older semiconductor manufacturing processes in 2010 will continue to suffer capacity constraints. This also implies that integrated device manufacturers hoping to achieve increased run rates for legacy technologies will not find the capacity they need this year.
