According to the latest report from IC Insights, despite rampant inflation, soaring energy costs, ongoing supply chain failures, recent Covid-19 virus lockdowns in China, and Russia's war with Ukraine, total semiconductor sales are still expected grow 11% this year and reach a record $680.7 billion in 2022.

In the report, IC Insights raised and lowered its sales growth forecasts for many major semiconductor product categories this year (Figure 1). These changes offset each other, keeping the overall semiconductor market at 11% growth in 2022, despite economic headwinds challenging global growth this year, the report said.

IC Insights expects semiconductor growth to remain at 11% in 2022-SemiMedia

The report raises the sales forecast for microcomponent ICs to 11% in 2022 from 7% early this year. This increase is being driven by stronger microprocessor sales in the embedded MPU category (now up 12% versus 9%, previously) and in cellular application processors (rising 22%, which is significantly higher than 10% in the January forecast).

The overall projection of total IC sales growth in 2022 is unchanged and expected to rise 11% this year to a record-high $567.1 billion. The new report keeps the 2022 growth forecast unchanged in analog ICs (up 12%) and logic integrated circuits (up 11%).

IC Insights lowers this year’s forecast for total sales volume in the non-IC semiconductor market categories—optoelectronics, sensors and actuators, and discrete semiconductors (O-S-D), which account for about 17% of total semiconductor revenue worldwide. Total O-S-D sales are now expected to rise 9% to $113.6 billion versus the previous projection of 11% growth in 2022. The new forecast cuts optoelectronics sales growth this year to just 6% because of weak gains in CMOS image sensors and lamp devices (mostly light-emitting diode—LEDs). However, the weakness in optoelectronics is partly being offset by stronger increases in discrete semiconductors, primarily because of higher increases in sales of power transistors (now expected to be up 11% in 2022) and diodes (projected to grow 10%) due to tight supplies worldwide and rising average selling prices (ASPs). IC Insights’ strong 15% growth forecast for sensor/actuator semiconductors remains unchanged in the new report.