Wall Street Analysis Forecasts Semiconductor Industry Revenue to Increase by 4% in 2012

Wall Street analysts in the United States predict that after global semiconductor industry revenue grows by 1-2% in 2011, the growth rate in 2012 will be between 0-4%.

“We remain optimistic about the semiconductor industry and believe that the economy will bottom out in the first quarter of 2012 and will fully recover with the destocking in the second half of the year; the growth rate of the industry in the second half is expected to exceed the end market.” Barclays Capital Analysis CJMuse said the agency estimates that the growth rate of the semiconductor industry in 2012 will be flat, up to 4%, which is in line with the lower than expected global GDP growth rate.

Barclays Capital earlier expected that the growth rate of the global chip industry in 2012 was 2 to 5%; Muse said that the agency's revised forecast data reflects the current industry's adjustment of inventory operations until the first quarter of 2012. In addition, the agency predicts that the global GDP growth rate in 2012 will be 3.3%.

Muse's prediction of the growth rate of the chip industry in 2012 is not far from the opinions of most other institutional analysts. At the end of 2011, Gartner predicted that the growth rate of the global semiconductor industry in 2011 was about 1%, and the growth rate in 2012 was 2.2%. In November 2011, analysts at IHSiSuppli predicted that the sales growth rate of the semiconductor industry in 2011 was 3.2%.

In addition, Muse also said that BarclaysCapital analysts still maintain the global front-end wafer equipment (frontendwaferequlement) industry will decline by 5% in 2012 forecast.