1, Automotive TFT-LCD Forecast: 70 million shipments by 2016
Demand for navigation, entertainment systems spurs sales of higher tech automotive displays. Sheer numbers reveal an exploding market for TFT-LCDs geared toward the automotive industry. shipments for these devices jumped 16% to 49 million in 2012. And there’s no slowdown in sight—projections show an increase to 70 million by 2016. Japan remains the global leader in automotive TFT-LCD panel production, particularly in high-grade automobiles. Japan Display became the top automotive TFT-LCD maker in 2012, followed by Sharp and LG Display. Car-navigation set makers, such as Panasonic, Alpine and Pioneer, drove TFT-LCD panel demand in Japan.
2, HDD market faces double-digit revenue dip
Global hard-disk-drive (HDD) market revenue will decline by nearly 12% in 2013,. With an estimated $32.7 billion in revenue , down 11.8% from $37.1 billion in 2012. The main antagonists fueling the downward trend are the tablets, smart phones and solid-state drives (SSDs) flooding into the market. However, HDDs’ lower manufacturing cost and pricing versus their SSD counterparts still drives their dominance in the marketplace. HDDs will continue to be part of storage solutions, even in ultrabooks that use an SSD component. The solution cobbles HDDs together with a so-called cache SSD module, creating a superior price-value proposition compared to SSD-only counterparts. Significant growth for HDDs is expected in the business sector spanning the enterprise space, cloud storage, big data and big-data analytics.
3, Chipmakers to increase capital spending
But it’s unclear whether a meaningful impact on chip supply. Semiconductor companies will increase their capital expenditures (capex) by about 2% this year.However, chipmakers’ investment in new front-end equipment to fabricate chips will be flat this year. There’s a lot of uncertainty with the economy and a lot of companies are not sure how much to invest or what to invest or when to invest.About 80 percent of capex is used to purchase new chip making equipment; the rest is used to acquire land and build new fabs.