Pure play foundry sales drive ic market growth

The sector significantly outperformed the total ic market, which saw revenue increase by 14% to $42.8billion. And this looks set to continue in 2014. IC Insights expects the pure play foundry market to grow 14% to $41.2bn this year and once again outperform the total ic market, which is forecast to increase by only 7%. On an annual basis, the market research firm anticipates continued revenue growth in the pure play foundry market throughout the forecast period, rising to $64.6bn in 2018. The weakest performance in the overall ic market last year came from integrated device manufacturer foundry's, which saw sales increase by just 2% to $6.6bn. Revenue is expected to grow 3% to $6.8bn in 2014. IC Insights believes the IDM foundry's most pressing problem is intense competition from the major pure play foundries. This, it says, will be especially evident as Apple begins moving a significant portion of its foundry business from IDM foundry Samsung to pure play foundries such as TSMC and/or GlobalFoundries in 2014.