Total wafer demand is expected to return to historical growth rates over the next five years. However, what is uncharacteristic of the past is the wide range of decline and growth that will be logged by specific product categories and technologies.

Sonics, Inc. and Semico Research Corporation have launched the “On-Chip Power Management Best Practices” survey. The purpose of this industry survey is to understand how chip designers are managing power consumption and contrast that with expected future best practices. The companies will publish results of the survey on their web sites in the fall of 2016.

Silicon wafers are the basic building block for the semiconductors used for the smallest sensor in a light bulb to the most advanced electronic system in the space shuttle.  It all starts from semiconductor grade polysilicon and is processed precisely to fit the needs of each application.  One of the main concerns is whether existing silicon wafer manufacturers can adequately supply 200mm and 300mm wafers to support expected demand from IoT-related devices.  There are only a handful of wafer manufacturers in the industry today.  New research from Semico, 

The cell phone market made up over half the MEMS unit volume in 2015. The low-end smartphones have fewer MEMS, but this segment is growing faster and cannibalizing feature phones. The low-end smartphones also have a growing number of MEMS in their Bill of Materials (BOMs). Unfortunately, growth in the cell phone market has slowed as the market has matured. What will be the next driver of substantial growth for MEMS?

Analog ICs are critical to nearly all electronic devices.  The global electronics market will consume over 127.5 billion analog ICs in 2016, which translates to several analog ICs per electronic device.  Analog ICs experienced stronger than average growth over the last several years as the mobility products grew at double digit rates.  These products have a higher than average analog content thus growth has exceeded the overall market.