GaAs Substrate Market Sees Further Revenue drop in 2013
Despite strong growth in the GaAs device market, GaAs bulk substrate manufacturers saw both production and revenues decline for the second straight year, according to a recently released Strategy Analytics' report.
The report "˜Semi-Insulating GaAs Bulk Substrate Markets: 2013-2018" forecasts that new mobile architectures, competing technologies and flattening GaAs device growth rates will result in further declines in the total available market (TAM) for GaAs bulk substrates.
It concludes that demand for semi-insulating GaAs bulk substrates declined by nearly 2 percent in 2013. The volume decline and increasing price erosion caused revenues to decline by 8 percent. As a result, bulk substrate demand will grow with a CAAGR of less than 1 percent through 2018. With price erosion returning to historical levels, the slow growth of substrate production will drop revenues to $160 million in 2018.
Eric Higham, Strategy Analytics' service director for advanced semiconductor applications commented: "There will be challenging times ahead for GaAs substrate manufacturers. "The emergence of CMOS PAs and multi-mode, multi-band GaAs PAs will both act to slow growth and reduce revenue."
Asif Anwar, director in the firm's strategic technologies practice added: "The good news is that prior disruptions in the GaAs bulk substrate supply chain appear to have been addressed, but this means a return to historical price erosion rates that will pull revenues down."
