Global Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Market: The growing consumer electronics market and increasing number of foundries due to COVID-19

Global Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment Market size exceeded USD 62.4 billion in 2020 and is poised to grow at USD 109.30 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 7% between 2020 and 2027. Key factors fuelling the growth of this market include the increasing investments in R&D facilities due to COVID-19 impact, increasing demand for electric and hybrid vehicles, the growing consumer electronics market and increasing number of foundries due to COVID-19, trend of miniaturization and technology migration, and high demand for chips to provide computation power and connectivity for AI applications.

Consumer electronics is one of the largest segments, which is solely dependent on the semiconductor industry. Consumer electronics is a huge application in the electronics industry, it boosts the global semiconductor manufacturing equipment market. The number of foundries globally has increased because of the increasing demand for consumer electronic devices. Changing chip sizes and innovative architectures in different electronic devices have uplifted the demand in the semiconductor industry, which has largely benefitted semiconductor equipment manufacturers.
Tiny dust particles affect the overall semiconductor manufacturing and fabrication process which require clean room and clean equipment for manufacturing. Moreover, manufacturing defects also causes a delay in supply and can cause additional loss in the form of order cancellation and shift of customers to other suppliers. The complexity of patterns increases because of multiple patterns on a chip at a very small scale. This requires high accuracy for transferring accurate data to the chip. The complexity of wafers has increased with the need for size reduction and high density of semiconductor chips has resulted in, which ultimately decreases lithography wavelength. The shrinkage in node size will make photomasks and wafers more complex, which will consequently result in the need for new semiconductor manufacturing equipment. All these factors inhibit the growth of the semiconductor manufacturing equipment market.

The prominent players in the global semiconductor manufacturing equipment market are -Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. (US), Micron Technology Inc. (US), Intel Corporation (US), Applied Materials Inc. (US), AlsilMaterial (US), Atecom Technology Co., Ltd (Taiwan), Tokyo Electron Limited (Japan), LAM RESEARCH Corporation (US), KLA-Tencor Corporation (US), Screen Holdings Co., Ltd (Japan), Teradyne Inc. (US), ASML Holdings N.V. (Netherlands), and Samsung Group (South Korea) among others.

China is one of the high-growth markets for semiconductor manufacturing equipment. The country is also one of the major manufacturers and supplier of electronic items globally. The high demand for electronics devices has resulted in an increasing need for ICs, which has created several opportunities for the semiconductor industry in the country. China houses around 289 semiconductor wafer fabrication or packaging and testing plants across 20 different provinces. In addition, the country has witnessed several semiconductor equipment researches and manufacturing related programs and initiatives, and various government investments to promote the development of domestically manufactured equipment. As a result, the local equipment manufacturing market has experienced the emergence of several prominent domestic companies in the semiconductor manufacturing equipment industry.