The global IC market is increasingly close to GDP

In 2018, IC insights, a well-known analysis agency, published an article on the IC industry and GDP. According to their statistics, from 2010 to 2017, the correlation coefficient between global GDP growth and IC market growth was 0.88, which is a very high number, because according to the theory of IC Insights, the perfect correlation is 1.0.

 

 

ICinsights pointed out in the report that since 2010, global economic growth has been the main factor affecting the growth of the integrated circuit industry. In this "global economy-driven" IC industry, factors such as interest rates, oil prices, and fiscal stimulus are the main drivers of IC market growth. This is very different from before 2010, when capital expenditures, IC industry capabilities and IC pricing characteristics drove the IC industry cycle.

 

 

In the chart above, ICinsights shows the real annual growth rate of the global GDP and IC market since 1992. According to their statistics, in the 30 years before 2010, the correlation coefficient ranged from a relatively low 0.35 in the early 1980s to a negative correlation of -0.10 in the 1990s (basically no correlation). Then it developed to 0.63 in the first 10 years of the 21st century, and then to 0.88 in the later period, which showed an overall upward trend with strong regularity.

 

IC Insights believes that the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions has led to the reduction of major IC manufacturers and suppliers. This is a major change in the supply base, indicating that the maturity of the industry helps promote global GDP growth and ICs are Related market growth. Other factors include the strong changes in the fabless business model and the decline in capital expenditures in the sales ratio. These trends indicate that huge changes in the semiconductor industry may lead to long-term volatility in market cycles.

 

According to their prediction, from 2018 to 2022, the correlation coefficient between global GDP and IC market will reach 0.95, which is higher than 0.88 from 2010 to 2017. Considering that there are more and more application scenarios of integrated circuits, different countries and regions have paid more attention to this field.