Internet of Things (IoT) will be the semiconductor industry's next growth driver, spurring demand for chip components for use in applications particularly automotive, medical/healthcare and smart family, according to TSMC president and co-CEO CC Wei.
The healthcare sector, for example, is forecast to reach US$6.8 billion in production value in 2017, said Wei. As for smart family, a family home could feature more than 500 smart devices by 2020, Wei indicated.
Mobile devices have replaced PCs as the major growth driver of the semiconductor market, Wei said. In 2014, about 1.88 billion mobile phones were shipped with 1.2 billion of them being smartphones.
Technology is also enabling devices to progress. Taking PC as an example, the penetration rate of the devices has been pushed up thanks to more advanced chip-making technologies, Wei suggested.
In addition, Wei believes the Taiwan semiconductor industry continues to move forward in the global semiconductor marketplace.
Worldwide semiconductor R&D expenditures were as high as US$56 billion in 2013, with the US semiconductor industry contributing the most at US$33 billion. Taiwan's R&D expenditures for the year came to about an impressive US$5 billion, Wei noted.
Among the industry's top-10 R&D spenders in 2014, two Taiwan-based companies were listed, Wei disclosed. TSMC's R&D spending for the year came to US$1.87 billion allowing the company to climb to fifth place in the ranking, while MediaTek moved up to ninth with total R&D expenditures of US$1.43 billion.
