In-Stat: Wireless, Consumer Products Continue to Drive Semiconductor Industry

In-Stat has issued a new report that finds the semiconductor industry will continue strong growth this decade due to fastest-growing silicon categories such as wireless cellular modems (2.5 million units shipped in 2004 to 14.6 million units in 2009) and wireless LAN chipsets (84 million units shipped in 2004 to 390 million units in 2009).

Chris Kissel at In-Stat said, "Cellular technology in particular, will continue to be a major growth engine through the remainder of the decade. The potential market for arguably the most successful consumer product of all time, the cellular handset, will grow from 1.6 billion cellular phone subscribers worldwide to 2.6 billion subscribers by 2009. That will represent one-third of the world’s population."

Key findings include:

• Sale of video game consoles bottomed out in 2005 at 16.5 million units. The launch of new products in the segment will double the size of the market by 2008.
• The PC is not dead. Some 100 million CPUs were sold in 2002; In-Stat estimates 187.3 million units will be sold in 2005.
• As to be expected, not all applications paint rosy pictures. PDAs are a dying product line as they are being absorbed in smartphones. By 2009, shipment levels will be almost 1/3 of 2005 levels.