Semiconductor Industry Trends and Growth

IoT: Connected revolution 
Semiconductors serve as the foundation for enabling emerging Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. The IoT revolution has increased the demand for semiconductor chips but also shifted value capture to software and solutions. To capitalize on this new market opportunity, semiconductor companies often need to shift marketing, sales, application engineering and product development approaches, and re-define go-to-market and monetization strategies.

Digital supply networks
Digitalization is transforming supply chains in every industry. In most cases the transformation is a shift from a structured, linear system to an open, interconnected, often cloud-based system that is able to integrate information from many different sources. In order to enhance the value of digitalization, semiconductor companies should consider taking a look at emerging digital supply network technologies in order to solve age old problems in the industry stemming from limited information transparency across the manufacturing and supply chain.

Consolidation through M&A
As semiconductor industry growth slows in individual segments, companies are increasingly turning towards mergers and acquisitions (M&A) to sustain profitability, seek new sources of revenue, and reduce revenue volatility through a diversified portfolio of products or solutions in the case of IoT. To help ensure value capture, semiconductor companies should consider developing a clear M&A strategy and drive execution.

The slowing of Moore’s Law and EUV
The fundamental economics and assumptions of semiconductor production are reaching a limit. Moore’s law has been slowing down over the last few years and soaring design costs are making the leading lithographic node economically out of reach for many companies. A strong trend of alternative designs, new multi-core architectures, die stacks, and multi-die packages show efforts to work around scaling performance limitations versus continue. Semiconductor companies can help by managing more complex back end assembly and test operations as the complexity increases and potential for yield loss increases due to more complex assembly. As the industry considers a shift to extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) or 450mm wafers to re-accelerate Moore’s Law, semiconductor companies, especially semiconductor equipment companies, need to be fully prepared.