Recently, SEMI released its mid-year forecast report at the annual SEMICON West exhibition, stating that global sales of integrated circuit semiconductor manufacturing equipment is expected to increase by 10.8% in 2018, reaching US$62.7 billion, exceeding the historical high of US$56.6 billion set last year; The semiconductor equipment market is expected to set a new record in 2019, with an expected growth of 7.7% to $67.6 billion.

In various segments of integrated circuit semiconductor manufacturing equipment, SEMI predicts that wafer processing equipment will grow by 11.7% to $50.8 billion in 2018; another front-end component consisting of fab equipment, wafer fabrication and reticle equipment is expected to grow 12.3% to $2.8 billion; the packaging equipment division is expected to grow 8.0% to $4.2 billion in 2018; and semiconductor test equipment is expected to grow 3.5% to $4.9 billion this year.

In terms of market performance in various countries and regions around the world, SEMI predicts that South Korea will maintain its largest equipment market position for the second consecutive year in 2018, and mainland China’s ranking will rise, ranking second for the first time.

The report also pointed out that mainland China has the highest growth rate of 43.5%, Japan's 32.1%, Europe's 11.6%, North America's 3.8%, and South Korea's 0.1%. SEMI predicts that by 2019, China will replace South Korea as the number one.