Ann Steffora Mutschler, Senior Editor-- Electronic News
In line with historic patterns, the pace of wafer area shipments slowed slightly in Q3, with silicon wafer area shipments totaling 2.2 billion square inches, up approximately 5 percent year-over-year from 2.1 billion square inches and essentially flat sequentially, the Silicon Manufacturers Group (SMG) of industry consortium SEMI reported late Tuesday.
In total, wafer shipments seem to be on track to see around 8% growth for the year, SMG noted.
Dr. Volker Braetsch, chairman for the SEMI SMG and corporate VP at Siltronic AG explained that these lower shipments are the result of smaller area diameter wafer shipments declining while 300mm wafer shipments continued to grow.
The group notes that the data is inclusive of polished silicon wafers, including virgin test wafers, epitaxial silicon wafers, and non-polished silicon wafers shipped by the wafer manufacturers to the end-users.
Last month, SMG released the results of a consensus survey from leading suppliers of silicon wafers to serve as an outlook for the demand in silicon units for the period 2007 to 2010, with silicon shipments expected to reach 8.7 billion square inches this year, 9.7 billion square inches in 2008, 10.3 billion square inches in 2009, and 10.8 billion square inches in 2010.
Total wafer shipments are expected to experience robust growth through the entire forecast period, with an average compound annual growth rate of 8% from 2006 to 2010, driven by 300mm.
