Worldwide sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment totalled $43.53bn in 2011, a 9% growth compared to $39.93bn in sales posted in 2010, according to a new report from Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI).
The global industry association’s report covered data from various categories such as wafer processing, assembly and packaging, test, and other front-end equipment.
The data also include other front-ends such as mask/reticle manufacturing, wafer manufacturing, and fab facilities equipment.
Increase in spending is reported for Europe, Japan and North America, which surpassed Taiwan as the region with the highest amount of spending with $9.26bn in equipment sales.
The market in Korea stood at second place with $8.66bn in sales, followed by Taiwan with a regional decrease of 24%, the SEMI report said.
A 15% increase was seen in the global wafer processing equipment market segment, whereas 14% decrease was observed in the assembly and packaging segment.
Other front-end equipment sales grew by 5%, whereas the total test equipment sales decreased 9% in 2011, the report said.
