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...

The global electronics industry normally experiences a seasonal upturn from mid-summer through the December holidays. However, this autumn’s upturn is less robust.

The market for chillers and heat exchangers used in semiconductor manufacturing equipment has more than doubled since 2014 and is expected to reach a total value of $383 million in 2019. The 18 percent compound annual growth rate of this segment...

The silicon wafer market got off to a rough start in 2019 with major silicon wafer manufacturers’ sales weakening in the first quarter of the year following a sharper memory market downturn than expected. Earnings forecasts for the rest of the...

IMF Revises Global Growth Estimates