The World Bank just released its updated Global Outlook for 2020 and 2021. The text is long but very worth reading. 

March and April world data clearly showed the impact of the global manufacturing slowdown driven by COVID-19. The world purchasing manager’s index plunged from 47.3 in March to 39.8 in April (Chart 1). Values below 50 indicate a manufacturing...

Global Manufacturing Activity

VLSI research recently released the list of top suppliers of critical subsystems to the semiconductor and related manufacturing industries in 2019. The data shows EUV adoption greatly benefited optical subsystems suppliers in 2019 as other...

Plunging stock prices and Coronavirus-driven business shutdowns presently dominate the news. Current economic data, including the recently released February Global Purchasing Manager Index, support earlier negative predictions of an imminent...

Expect slow recovery in 2020 to pave the way to a record next year

Critical subsystems technologies for semiconductor applications are highly engineered and specialised pieces of equipment. By their nature, only a select group of companies are able to produce these products to the high specifications demanded by...

World Manufacturing Growth Flat to Start 2020 (Chart 1) 

The December Global Purchasing Managers Index was in zero growth territory (PMI = 50). However, the various country components varied significantly. With IHS Markit PMI data as a gauge of...

Global fab equipment spending is slowly crawling out of its slump in the second half of 2019 with a pickup in investments in memory – particularly 3D NAND – leading-edge logic and foundries. Compared to the first half of 2019, the second half...

Despite a tough year for critical subsystem suppliers, their overall expenditure on research and development has remained at near record levels – evidence that critical subsystems are indeed critical to the semiconductor manufacturing equipment...