China local chipmakers still have a long way to catch up on current market dominators.
According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, global semiconductor sales dropped about 15% on a year on year basis in July, followed the sliding trend of the first half-year. The market size was about USD 149 billion, fell 18% compared to the same period of 2018.
IC Insights, a market research organization, recently released a report that ranked the latest global TOP15 semiconductor vendors, based on the revenue for the first half of 2019. The report shows that Samsung, Hynix, Micron and other giants plummeted, and Intel took back the winner throne from Samsung, even it had a 2% decrease in sales turnover.
The slowdown is mainly due to the sharp decline in memory chips' price, as the low demand and high inventory level.
"The long-term prospects of the global semiconductor industry are bright, and the industry will continue to expand. Especially in the fields of healthcare, transportation technology, and data access, semiconductor technology plays an irreplaceable role and occupies a growing share in the industry chain, becoming one of the leading parts of the world economy" said Sanjay Mehrotra, chief executive of Micron Technology.
China is now a huge semiconductor market, accounting for one-third of global sales in 2018. For a long time, the integrated circuit in China has highly depended on import.
For the local chipmakers, taking market shares from foreign giants is urgent; capital organizations also show enthusiasm about this sector. However, as an R&D extensive industry, there is no bucket to catch up without continuous innovation and a talent pool.
"It will take at least five to ten year for China to catch up current market dominators such as America and Korea," said Zhou Zhiping (周治平), professor of Beijing University.