The 2018 McClean Report separates the total IC market into four main product categories: analog, logic, memory, and microcomponents. Figure 1 shows the projected CAGRs for 2017–2022 for these product categories compared to the projected annual growth rate of 5.1% for the total IC market over the five-year period.
Analog integrated circuits, the fastest-growing product category in the forecast, are essential in both high-end systems and low-budget applications. Components such as analog power management devices help regulate energy usage to keep devices running cooler and ultimately extend battery life in smartphones and other battery-powered/mobile systems. The power management market is projected to grow by 8% in 2018 after increasing by 12% in 2017.
In 2018, the analog market specifically for automotive applications is projected to grow by 15%, making it the fastest-growing analog IC category and the third fastest-growing of the 33 IC product categories ranked by WSTS. The growth of autonomous and electric vehicles, along with more onboard electronics in all new vehicles, is expected to maintain robust demand for automotive analog devices.
Communications and consumer applications continue to represent the largest end-use applications for analog integrated circuit signal conversion. Signal conversion components (data converters, mixed-signal devices, etc.) are forecast to continue their accelerated growth with double-digit sales gains in three of the next five years.
After an extraordinary 58% sales spike in 2017, the memory market is forecast to return to more "normal" growth. The memory market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 5.2% through 2022. New flash memory capacity, and to a lesser extent DRAM, should alleviate the pressure on rapidly growing applications and create a better supply-demand balance for these devices, supporting newer applications such as enterprise SSDs, augmented and virtual reality, graphics, artificial intelligence, and other complex real-time workload functions.
Meanwhile, growth in the microcomponent market (forecast CAGR of 3.9%) has cooled due to weak orders for standard PCs (desktops and laptops). Tablet sales have also slowed, reducing overall microcomponent sales. With the exception of the 32-bit MCU market, annual sales gains in most microcomponent segments are forecast to remain in the low to mid-single digits through 2022.
IC Insights forecasts that the total IC market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 5.1% from 2017 to 2022. Following a 22% increase in 2017, the total IC market is forecast to grow 8% in 2018 to $393.9 billion and then continue its upward trend to reach $466.8 billion in 2022, the final forecast year.
