Taiwanese Fabless IC Industry's Shipment Value Reaches US$4.15Bn, Inching up 3.8% Sequentially

Tuesday 14 January 2014, Amsterdam

The Taiwanese fabless IC industry's shipment value continued to surge in the third quarter of 2013, inching up 3.8% sequentially to around US$4.15 billion. The growth was fueled by MediaTek's strong chip shipments for mid-range and value line smart handheld devices, dismissing previous forecasts of a flat or slightly declined shipment value in the third quarter due to the already high growth in the second quarter and lackluster demand for computer application ICs.

A breakdown of the industry's shipment value by application category revealed that computer and peripherals slipped one percentage point sequentially to 24.5% in the third quarter, as affected by the continuously sluggish PC market and the lower-than-expected penetration rate of touch control notebook PCs. For consumer electronics, the share of TV application fell short of expectation while tablet application IC managed to maintain flat at 32%, thanks to the peak season demand for digital games. For communications, the sizzling sales of MediaTek's dual-core and quad-core products in China pushed the category's share upward to the highest of all in the Taiwanese fabless IC industry, at 39% in the third quarter.