Electronics Weekly Electronics Design & Components Tech News
“For the most part the industry is in hopeful denial,“ said Penn “if we had a soft landing it would be for the first time in the 70 year history of the semiconductor industry.“
Whereas the long-term annual trend of 8% unit growth would deliver a 6.5 billion monthly unit shipment rate at this point in time, the current actual shipment rate is 7.8 billion units a month.
A shipment rate which is 20% over long-term trends is one indication of an impending downturn. 
Others are:
June ASPs fell 18.1% across all categories, said Penn, memory was down 20%, logic was down 3.2%, micros were down 2.7% and analogue was down 0.3%.
For Q4 2022 the expectation is for a drop in the market of 9% to deliver a full year market worth $578.3 billion after 4% growth.
For 2023 the forecast is for the market to drop 10% in Q1, 8% in Q2, 4% in Q3, and 2.5% in Q4 for a total drop for the full year of 22% to deliver a market of $450.89 billion.
Capex is running at 23% of sales and will go up, because sales will go down and the sales-to-capex ratio is already at a 20 year record high. The 2021 capex of $103 billion – up 45% on 2020 – will start to add to capacity in H2 2022 – just as the market turns down, said Penn.
“It takes two quarters to build momentum and four quarters to reach the bottom,” said Penn, who sees 2024 as a “stabilisation year” and 2025 as the year when the industry “starts sowing the seeds for the next Super-Cycle.”
