The weakness may
be attributed to oversupply of DRAM and NAND around the latter end of last
year, as well as demand weakness in China. Both DRAM and NAND are expected to
decline in 2019 and 2020.
Mario Morales, program vice president, Semiconductors at IDC said, “We expect the market to bottom by end of the third quarter this year as we work through inventories and demand begins to gradually return. Cloud infrastructure investment, 5G mobile devices, WiFi 6 adoption, Smart NICs, automotive sensors, powertrain technologies, AI training accelerators, and edge inference SoCs will be instrumental in our growth expectations for 2020 and beyond.”
READ: THIS TIME ELON MUSK GETS AN AWARD FOR HIS TWEETS
IDC expects to see
more consolidation activities this year as the industry gets in grips with the
outcomes of the US-China trade war. There have already been six major M&A
deals this year, besides a divestiture by Intel (NASDAQ:
INTC).
Research manager for Semiconductors Nina Turner said, “Our long-term thesis remains intact. The automotive market remains one of the strong growth drivers over the forecast horizon as semiconductor content and design activity for autonomous enabling technologies will continue to drive 3-4 times more growth than the overall market.”
Listen to on-demand earnings calls and hear how management responds to analysts’ questions