“Consumer purchases of a broad range of electronic products continue to grow as the leading driver of demand for semiconductors,” said SIA President George Scalise. 

• Digital cameras with projected 11% unit growth, MP3 players with projected 35% unit growth, digital televisions with projected 56% unit growth account for nearly 20% of all semiconductor consumption. 
• cell phones drive 20% of semiconductor sales. As unit sales of cell phones are expected to 1 billion units in 2006, with an average semiconductor content of $41 per unit, the cell phone market is now the second-largest consumer of semiconductors, after personal computers. 
• When consumer purchases of automobiles, personal computers, and other electronic products are taken into consideration, consumers account for more than half of all semiconductor consumption.

Today in China, nearly 90% of all GSM handsets have color screens, while more than 60% have cameras, and about half have MP3 capabilities. Next year SIA expects to see cell phones with global positioning satellite (GPS) capabilities. The addition of these features requires high-performance flash memory, DSP circuits, RG chips, and image-sensing devices.

Major Semiconductor Product Categories

Discrete products are projected to grow by 8.8% to $16.6 billion in 2006 and to $19.9 in 2009, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.9%. Discrete components include power transistors and radio frequency (RF) transistors that are found in wireless consumer products.

Optoelectronic device sales are projected to grow by 12.3 percent to $16.7 billion in 2006 and to $22.1 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 10.4 percent. Optoelectronics devices include image-sensors that are used in camera phone and digital still camera applications.

Analog sales are projected to grow by 16.8 percent to $37.3 billion in 2006 and to $48.6 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 11.1 percent. Analog is one of the most ubiquitous products, including power management solutions used in all electronic devices.

Microprocessor sales are projected to decrease by 5 percent to $33.2 billion in 2006 and grow overall to $41.9 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 4.7 percent. Microprocessors are the engines of personal computers and are used in embedded control applications.

Microcontroller sales are projected to grow by 3.5 percent to $12.5 billion in 2006 and to $15.3 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 6.1 percent. Microcontrollers are used in a wide variety of end-use applications, including automotive and process control systems.

Digital signal processor sales are projected to grow by 12.8 percent to $8.6 billion in 2006 and to $12.3 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 12.7 percent. DSPs are the engines of wireless communications devices.

MOS logic device sales are projected to grow by 4.6 percent to $60.3 billion in 2006 and to $78.8 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 8.1 percent. MOS logic includes standard logic, standard cell, field programmable logic devices, and a broad range of application-specific devices.

DRAM sales are projected to increase by 29 percent to $33 billion in 2006 and to $44.2 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 14.6 percent. The major application for DRAMs is in personal computers. DRAMs are also increasingly used in handsets.

Flash memory sales are projected to grow by 10.4 percent to $20.5 billion in 2006 and to $25.7 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 8.4 percent. NAND Flash is growing faster than NOR – NAND sales are projected to grow by 10.7 percent to $11.7 billion in 2006 and to $16.3 billion in 2009, a CAGR of 11.3 percent. Flash memory devices are used cell phones, digital still cameras, and a broad range of other applications.