Presenting the Semiconductor Industry Association’s (SIA) eagerly anticipated Mid-Year Forecast today to senior industry executives and market analysts, Fairchild Semiconductor International Chairman, President and CEO Kirk Pond highlighted a resurgence of business-to-business e-commerce, increasing adoption of mobile and wireless technologies and continuing demands for more bandwidth as key drivers for the industry’s growth.
The SIA is the leading voice for the semiconductor industry and has represented U.S.-based manufacturers since 1977. Its members comprise more than 90% of U.S.-based semiconductor production. Industry forecasts, compiled from member projections, are issued twice a year.
Pond was chosen by the association to deliver the results because he is widely considered an industry visionary. His accomplishments include spearheading the semiconductor industry’s first leveraged buyout and architecting the reemergence of Fairchild Semiconductor as an independent entity four years ago. Since that time, the company has nearly tripled revenues to $1.78 billion in 2000 and become a leader in the power semiconductor segment while defining and establishing leadership in the multi-market sector of the industry. With an impressive 33-year track record, Pond is an electronics industry veteran who has navigated successful transitions through seven semiconductor industry down cycles.
While 2001 looks like it will be down 14%, the SIA sees the beginning of the upturn later this year, with a 20% growth rate expected in 2002, said Pond. We’re moving into a new era fueled by explosive demands for bandwidth, with an overhaul in the Internet infrastructure and an increase in business-to-business e-commerce fueling another Net boom. This evolution will take place as e-commerce matures and becomes an integral part of conducting business, instead of simply functioning as it began as an extension of existing retail business. We see four times as much opportunity ahead as we have experienced in the past. The down cycle of 2001 doesn’t represent the end of the Internet; rather, it signals the end of the Internet’s first phase and foreshadows the growth and opportunity that lies ahead.
The wireless Internet will be as important as the wired Internet, driving the growth of mobile devices and equipment, Pond continued. All of this is good news for our industry. We’re also seeing shifts in global markets, with Asia Pacific and Japan increasingly representing a larger market. Emerging applications, for example speech recognition, will drive new electronics opportunities across many industries, including automotive, telecommunications and computers.
The semiconductor industry has been through numerous downturns, always re-emerging at healthy growth rates. Our current cycle is severely affected by the lack of new, compelling applications for PCs, servers and wireless devices. That will change as B2B replaces B2C as the growth engine for e-commerce. While this is not the time to be overly optimistic, we foresee the turnaround beginning by the end of this year, commented Pond.
