SAN FRANCISCO — Sales of semiconductor capital equipment continue to accelerate, boosted by a booming memory chip market and the migration to more advanced technology nodes.
North America based fab tool vendors posted both sequential and year-over-year increases in billings once again in June, as the industry remains on track for its record sales.
"Through the first half of the year, 2017 equipment billings are 50 percent above the same period last year," said Dan Tracy, senior director for industry research and statistics at the SEMI trade association.
The three-month average of semiconductor capital equipment billings by North American semiconductor vendors (in millions of dollars).
Source: SEMI
The three-month rolling average of billings for North American equipment firms totaled $2.29 billion in June, up nearly 1 percent from May and up 33 percent compared with June 2016, SEMI (San Jose, Calif.) said.
SEMI earlier this month forecast that semiconductor equipment sales would increase by 20 percent this year to reach $49.4 billion. This total would represent an all-time record for fab tool sales, topping the mark of $47.7 billion set during the dotcom boom in 2000.
Dan Tracy
"While month-to-month growth is slowing, 2017 will be a remarkable growth year for the semiconductor capital equipment industry," Tracy said.
SEMI also announced that wafer shipments increased in the second quarter by 4.2 percent compared with the first quarter. It marked the fifth consecutive quarter of record shipments for global silicon wafer volume, SEMI said.
—Dylan McGrath is the editor-in-chief of EE Times.
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