Published in IoT

Internet of Things will kick-start semi-conductor industry

by on22 April 2015


TSMC sees gold in them thar hills

Internet of Things (IoT) will be the semiconductor industry's next growth driver, according to TSMC president and co-CEO CC Wei.

 

 

Wei believes that the healthcare chip market will reach US$6.8 billion in production value in 2017, said Wei. Meanwhile a family home could feature more than 500 smart devices by 2020.

He said that mobile devices have already replaced PCs as the major growth driver of the semiconductor market and in 2014, about 1.88 billion mobile phones were shipped with 1.2 billion of them being smartphones.

Technology is also enabling devices to progress. Taking PC as an example, the penetration rate of the devices has been pushed up thanks to more advanced chip-making technologies, Wei said.

Worldwide semiconductor R&D expenditures were as high as US$56 billion in 2013, with the US semiconductor industry contributing the most at US$33 billion. Taiwan's R&D expenditures for the year came to about an impressive US$5 billion, Wei noted.

Among the industry's top-10 R&D spenders in 2014, two Taiwan-based companies were listed, Wei disclosed. TSMC's R&D spending for the year came to US$1.87 billion allowing the company to climb to fifth place in the ranking, while MediaTek moved up to ninth with total R&D expenditures of US$1.43 billion

Last modified on 22 April 2015
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