Japan Equipment Market to Near $14 Billion

Staff -- Semiconductor International, 4/1/1998

In the year 2000, sales revenues, including exports, for Japanese-made semiconductor manufacturing equipment is expected to reach $13.8 billion.

The data are from the semiconductor manufacturing equipment demand forecasts released for the period through the year 2000 by the SEAJ. The same report  shows that sales of Japan-manufactured equipment for FY96 rose 8.5% over the prior year to reach $9.4 billion, the highest ever. Forecasts for FY97 are based on performance for the first half (April-October 1997), which showed a 1.2% increase to $6 billion for the cumulative total, but a 5.4% rise to $9.9 billion overall, leading the SEAJ to predict the total will top last year. The SEAJ claimed that this is due to device manufacturers introducing state-of-the-art equipment to survive in spite of the DRAM slump. The situation is expected to continue for the near future, with an expected growth rate of 10% through the year 2000. Forecasts for FY97 by equipment type show a growth rate close to 50% for memory test systems (47.2% growth, $1.1 billion), but forecasts are down for lithography and direct write (5.1% down, $1.9 billion), thermal processing (1.5% down, $0.44 billion) and sputtering (5.7% down, $0.19 billion).

Sales totals for the Japanese market rose 1.7% in FY96 to reach $6 billion. FY97 is pegged at a 1.9% minus growth to $5.9 billion, but growth should switch to the plus side in FY98, finally reaching $7.9 billion in FY2000 to break to the 1 trillion yen mark. The average growth rate from FY97 to FY2000 is forecast at 7.2%.