What End Use Applications Drove Semiconductor Sales in 2014?

by Semiconductor Industry Association

The World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization recently published its annual Semiconductor End-Use Report for 2014, which breaks down sales by end-use and regional end-market for a wide variety of semiconductor products. The figure below shows the six major semiconductor end applications by percent share of total semiconductor end sales for 2014.

2014 marked the first time that communications was the largest end use application for semiconductors, overtaking the PC/computer end use application category. In 2014, communications represented 34.4 percent of total end use sales of semiconductors and PC/computer accounted for 30.6 percent of total end use sales. The communications end use share of the market increased in 2014 from 2013 by 1.9 percent, while the PC/computer end use share decreased by 3.4 percent. While PCs continue to represent a major end use market for the semiconductor industry, increasing demand for consumer products like smart phones and tablets have spurred significant growth in the communications end market in recent years.

The third-largest end-use category in 2014 was the consumer category at 12.9 percent of the total market, the fourth largest was industrial/government at 11.7 percent, and automotive was fifth at 10.4 percent. In terms of the trends, the consumer share decreased in 2014 by 1.4, while the industrial/government and automotive categories increased by 2 percent and 0.9 percent, respectively.

The 2014 Semiconductor End-Use Report provides end use data by major end application for all the major semiconductor product sub-segments as well as by major geographic regions, including Asia-Pacific, Americas, Japan, and the EU. Furthermore, the survey presents tables with end-use shares by percentage and by total sales in dollars. With almost 2,000 data points in the entire report, the 2014 Semiconductor End-Use Report is a valuable resource for anyone interested in understanding semiconductor market trends by end-use.

For more information about the 2014 End-Use Report, please feel free to contact me directly at fyinug@semiconductors.org. Also, the report is available for purchase on the SIA website here.