IC Insights has raised its 2017 IC market growth rate forecast to 22%, six percentage points higher than the 16% increase shown in its mid-year update. The IC group's shipment volume growth rate forecast has also increased from 11% in the mid-year update to 14%. As shown below, a significant portion of the revised market forecast is due to the growing flash DRAM and NAND markets.
In addition to raising its IC market forecast for this year, IC Insights has also increased its forecast for the OSD (optoelectronics, sensor/actuator, and discrete) market. Overall, the semiconductor industry is now expected to register a 20% increase this year, five percentage points higher than the 15% growth rate forecast in the mid-year update.
For 2017, IC Insights expects a massive 77% increase in DRAM ASP, which is projected to drive the DRAM market to 74% growth this year—the highest growth rate since the DRAM market's 78% growth in 1994. After including a projected 44% increase in the NAND flash market in 2017, including a 38% increase in NAND flash ASP this year, the total memory market is projected to grow by 58% in 2017, with another 11% increase expected for 2018.
At $72 billion, the DRAM market is projected to be by far the largest product category in the semiconductor industry in 2017, surpassing the expected NAND flash market ($49.8 billion) by $2.2 billion this year. As shown in Figure 1, the DRAM and NAND flash segments are forecast to have a strong positive impact of 13 percentage points on the overall IC market growth this year. Excluding these memory segments, the IC industry is projected to grow by 9%, less than half the current IC market growth forecast of 22% when these memory markets are included.
