Semiconductor industry bellwether, Taiwanese foundry TSMC, is almost booked out of capacity on 40nm processes and better, reports Digitimes.
Apparently AMD, TI, Infineon, Freescale, Broadcom, MediaTek, MStar, Nvidia and Qualcomm have all been increasing orders put on TSMC.
"TSMC’s Q1 is everyone else’s Q2,” points out Malcolm Penn, CEO of analysts Future Horizons, “so, if TSMC sees a strong Q1 then everyone else is expecting growth in Q2."
Digitimes reckons that inventories in the mobile phone, consumer and PC industries are being rebuilt, and that Q1 will be the bottom of the semiconductor industry sales cycle with increasing sales thereafter for the rest of the year.
Last week, TSMC announced its January sales were 10.6% up on December - very much against seasonal trends – albeit coming from a low base.
TSMC CEO Morris Chang forecast semiconductor growth for 2012 of 3-5% but added that he expected TSMC to out-grow not only the overall semiconductor industry but also the foundry industry.
Penn is plumping for 8% semiconductor growth in 2012 but reckons, if the economy bounces back as fast as it did after Lehman, it could be as much as 20%..