Global wafer fab equipment expenditure is expected to reach nearly $100 billion in 2022, setting a new historical high

On September 27, 2022, California time, SEMI announced in its latest quarterly World Fab Forecast that global fab equipment spending is expected to increase by approximately 9% year-on-year in 2022, reaching a historic high of $99 billion.

After reaching record levels in 2022, it is expected that the global wafer fab equipment market will continue to maintain healthy development next year, driven by the construction and upgrading of new wafer fabs, "said Ajit Manocha, President and CEO of SEMI

It is estimated that Taiwan, China will lead the expenditure on wafer factory equipment in 2022, with an increase of 47% year-on-year to 30 billion US dollars. Next is South Korea, reaching 22.2 billion US dollars, a decrease of 5.5%. China's value is 22 billion US dollars, a decrease of 11.7% from last year's peak. It is expected that expenditures in the Europe/Middle East region will reach a record high of $6.6 billion this year, a year-on-year increase of 141%. Despite relatively low expenditures compared to other regions, strong demand for advanced high-performance computing (HPC) technologies is driving a surge in expenditures in the region. It is expected that investment in the Americas and Southeast Asia will also reach historic highs in 2023.

The semiconductor industry's production capacity continues to increase

According to the SEMI World Fab Forecast, global production capacity is expected to increase by 7.7% this year, following a 7.4% growth in 2021. The last time wafer fab equipment experienced an 8% year-on-year growth was in 2010, when the monthly production capacity exceeded 16 million wafers (equivalent to 8 inches), which is approximately half of the expected 29 million wafers per month in 2023. It is expected that production capacity will continue to grow by 5.3% in 2023.

In 2022, the capacity growth of 167 wafer fabs and production lines will account for over 84% of equipment expenditure. With the increase in capacity of 129 known wafer fabs and production lines, it is expected that this proportion will decline to 79% next year.

As expected, the Foundry segment will account for 53% of device spending in 2022 and 2023, followed by memory, which will account for 32% and 33% respectively. These two areas have the largest increase in production capacity.

The latest World Fab Forecast report released this time lists 1453 factories and production lines worldwide, including 148 factories and production lines expected to start production in 2022 or later.