Asia-Pacific IC sales toped $100 Billion in 2006

Regional marketshare is highest in all but one IC product category

Sales of ICs to the Asia-Pacific region exceeded $100 billion for the first time in 2006, accounting for 48% of the $209.5 billion IC market, up one point from 47% marketshare in 2005. The Americas region represented 20% of 2006 IC sales, while Europe and Japan each captured 16% marketshare (Figure 1).

As recently as the year 2000, the Asia-Pacific segment held 25% IC marketshare; the Americas region, 33%. Since then, Asia-Pacific has gained an astonishing 23 points of marketshare. In terms of dollar volume, the Asia-Pacific region has grown from $26 billion in 1995, $44 billion in 2000, $75 billion in 2004, to $100.4 billion in 2006.

The strong gain in Asia-Pacific's IC marketshare coincides with rapid growth of electronic system production in the region. With more of the world's electronic systems forecast to be produced in Asia-Pacific (non-Japan), and China in particular, IC Insights believes that Asia-Pacific market growth will continue to significantly outpace the other three major regions for at least the next five years. IC Insights forecasts that Asia-Pacific's share of the IC market will increase to 59% of the total IC market in 2011.

In 2006, the Asia-Pacific region captured the greatest marketshare in all but one IC product category - microcontrollers, where the European region held the lead. Asia-Pacific's marketshare topped 50% in analog, DSP, logic, and flash memory. It held at least 42% marketshare in MPU, DRAM, and the combined "other" memory category (SRAM, EEPROM, EPROM, ROM, etc.).

Asia-Pacific also had the largest marketshare for both the discretes and sensors/actuators segments while Japan was tops in optoelectronics.