Doris Hsu, chairman of GlobalWafers, said that driven by the new 5G applications, the overall industry recovery is better than expected, and the 12-inch silicon wafer market will gradually recover in 2020.
Doris Hsu pointed out that in the second half of this year, orders from major customers such as TSMC, Intel, and Micron have grown. Currently, GlobalWafers' customer demand in many regions of the world is better than expected.
Doris Hsu further analyzed that as the foundry customers' 16 and 7 nanometers and other advanced process capacity are fully loaded, epitaxial silicon wafers for 12-inch logic processes have been in short supply, and orders for non-epitaxial silicon wafers such as polished wafers have continued to increase, resulting in tight production capacity. Overall, the market situation of 12-inch silicon wafers has significantly improved, and next year's performance will be better than this year.
In addition, Doris Hsu also confirmed the recent news that the rebound in demand for CMOS image sensors (CIS), power management ICs, large-size panel driver ICs, and power semiconductors has led to tight production capacity at 8-inch foundries.
