China Enters Top Chip Equipment Spenders
TAIPEI — China, which is making a bid to become one of the world’s biggest chipmaking nations, is likely for the first time to be among the top-three spenders on chipmaking equipment in 2016, according to industry association SEMI.
The big spenders this year will be Taiwan, South Korea and China, SEMI said in a press statement released at the annual SEMICON Japan exhibition in Tokyo. China, with a forecast expenditure of $6.7 billion, will overtake the number-three spot from Japan, coming in at $4.8 billion, according to SEMI.
Total worldwide spending will increase by 8.7 percent to $39.7 billion, according to the chip industry association, which also forecast an increase in expenditures on chipmaking equipment in 2017 to $43.40 billion.
China, the world’s workshop, assembles smartphones, tablets and PCs for everyone from Apple to ZTE, yet still imports more chips than it makes domestically. The nation has been aiming to capture a bigger piece of the semiconductor business since the late 1990s. China will increase its share of total domestic chip consumption to 21 percent by 2020 cChina Enters Top Chip Equipment Spender compared with about 13 percent in 2015, according to market researcher IC Insights
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In 2015, China was in 5th place in terms of integrated circuit production capacity after South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and NOrth America. However, they aim to catch up, especially since the US embargoed Intel processors for Chinese supercomputing clusters.
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