IC Insights Forecasts Record IC Unit Shipments for 2003

IC Insights’ Mid-Year update to The McClean Report (to be released in August) will describe in detail its forecast for the IC industry through 2007. IC Insights’ current forecast shows worldwide IC unit volume shipments reaching 90.3 billion in 2003, an all-time high surpassing the previous record of 86.5 billion units registered in the boom year of 2000.At 90.3 billion units, the 2003/2002 IC unit volume growth rate would be 15 percent. This is an increase of 4 percentage points from IC Insights’ previous 2003 IC unit volume forecast of 11 percent growth. IC unit volume shipments are forecast to continue to growing at a fast pace in 2004 with another 15 percent increase. As shown in Figure 1, IC Insights forecasts that 2004 IC unit volume shipments will exceed 100.0 billion to set another all-time record high.Although IC unit volume shipments are forecast to set new records in 2003, IC dollar volume sales this year are still expected to fall far short of the all-time high of $176.9 billion set in 2000. IC Insights’ latest forecast shows 2003 worldwide IC sales at $136.4 billion, a 2003/2002 increase of 13 percent (2 points less than our previous 2003 forecast of 15 percent).More details on IC Insights’ IC market and technology forecasts can be found in The McClean Report 2003 and subsequent monthly updates.