The market is set grow 10.5 percent to $12.36 billion in 2007 and a further 15 percent to $14.22 billion in 2008, the U.S.-based Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) predicted at the SEMICON Korea 2006 trade show here.

The 2006 market value was broken down into $6.36 billion spent on equipment, up 8.0 percent over 2005’s $5.89 billion, and $4.83 billion for materials, a 0.8 percent rise from $4.36 billion in 2005. SEMI said the South Korean equipment market was expected to stand at $8.18 billion in 2008, while the materials sector would grow to $6.04 billion, according to the report.

The report went into additional detail predicting that the wafer processing equipment market would grow from $4.39 billion in 2005 by 4.3 percent to $4.58 billion in 2006 and would maintain steady growth to achieve $6.06 billion in 2008. The test apparatus sector will jump from $0.95 billion in 2005 to $1.14 billion in 2006 in 2006 to $1.36 billion in 2008, according to SEMI.

In the materials forecast, SEMI said the wafer fab field by value was estimated at $2.19 billion in 2005, with expectations of $2.35 billion in 2006 and $2.72 billion in 2008. The packaging sector amounted to $2.17 billion, with the size forecast to be $2.47 billion and $3.32 billion in the same mentioned years, respectively.

According to figures released by the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA) late in 2005, more than 80 percent of the country’s total demand for chip manufacturing equipment was supplied by imports in 2005, while more than half of the materials sector’s total demand relied on imports. The import ratios would remain at almost the same level this year, the figures showed.

By: DocMemory
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