Memory chips are expected to show the strongest growth rate among major IC market categories during the next five years with a CAGR of 7.3% to $109.9 billion in 2021 from $77.3 billion in 2016, says IC Insights’ 20th anniversary McClean Report 2017.

The report separates the total IC market into four major product categories: analogue, logic, memory, and microcomponents.

The memory IC category is forecast to show the strongest growth rate through 2021 while the weakest increase is expected to occur in the logic category, which includes general-purpose logic, ASICs, field-programmable logic, display drivers, and application-specific standard products.

The strong memory CAGR is driven by surging low-power memory requirements for DRAM and NAND flash in portable wireless devices like smartphones and by growing demand for solid-state drives (SSD) used in big-data storage applications and increasingly in notebook computers.

Moreover, year-over-year DRAM bit volume growth is expected to increase throughout the forecast to support virtualization, graphics, and other complex, real-time workload applications.

Within Analogue ICs, which is the second-fastest growing segment, the signal conversion market is forecast to be the fastest growing analogue IC category, and the second-fastest growing IC product category overall, trailing only the market growth of 32-bit MCUs.

Total microcomponent sales have cooled significantly. Fortunately, marginal gains in the cellphone MPU market and strong gains in the 32-bit MCU market have helped offset weakness of standard PC and tablet microprocessor sales.

By: DocMemory
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