Reports

When you think of profitable semiconductor categories, what comes to your mind? In a good year, NAND and DRAM can be very profitable. Considering Intel's size and position in the market, Micro Logic would be another good guess. But the smart money goes to the Analog market for long-term, stable profitability. The analog segment is the subject of a new study just released by Semico Research Corp., Analog Market Trends: Fourth Quarter 2011.

Today, everywhere we turn, we hear speakers give presentations at conferences and industry events despairing how the rise in silicon design costs hampers the semiconductor industry's growth path. As part of this problem, we now recognize that software design costs have eclipsed silicon design efforts and have become the largest portion of the SoC creation effort.

The Executive Briefs cycle through 33 markets per year. Our analysts look to the segments that account for >80% of semiconductors, meaning our list of markets is fluid; we’re constantly adding new high growth markets to the list.

The Wafer Demand Summary and Assumptions is a quarterly publication. It includes an excel spreadsheet with annual wafer demand by product by technology from 2002-2015. Product categories include DRAM, SRAM, NAND, NOR, Other Non-volatile, MPU, MCU, DSP, Computing Micro Logic, Communications, Other Micro Logic, Programmable Logic, Standard Cell, Gate Array, Analog, Discrete, Optoelectronics, Digital Bipolar. In addition, there is a five-page summary write-up providing the major assumptions behind the forecast and changes from the previous quarter.