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| Ken Cavallaro, Business Manager, Circuitnet
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We were invited to attend the 2010 Spring Conference of the iMAPS Global Business Council yesterday at the Radisson Fort McDowell in Scottsdale, AZ in conjunction with Device Packaging 2010. We listened to many speakers and the presenters were very upbeat, which is interesting as exactly 12 months ago, the market was hitting all time lows.
While the focus of IMAPS programs are largely technical in nature, one initiative is designed to address the business side of technologies. The Microelectronics Marketing Research Council (MMRC) revised its charter to broaden its focus globally as well as addressing additional business topics.
The Global Business Council (GBC) is an IMAPS initiative that focuses on business issues related to the technology areas addressed by the corporate organizational members of IMAPS.
The semi and micro-electronics industry rebound over the past 6 months has created optimism throughout the market. Yesterday’s speaker’s reinforced the industry’s recovery and discussed upcoming technology which will lead the market to continue the expansion for several years.
The lunch presentation by Bill McClean, President, IC Insights was very upbeat. He showed us graphs outlining the robust recovery which began in the 2nd half of 2009 and he expects to continue through 2012. His presentation reminded attendees of his optimism last year with his commentary that this was a bottom, and the market will be better by 2010. He was right on target, and maybe even conservative.
To highlight this conservative stance, IC Insights raised its target for Worldwide Semiconductor growth to 27% yesterday and claims the revenue in 2010 will exceed the previous high in 2007. You can read more about this upgrade at this IC Insights link.
Ms. E. Jan Vardaman, President of TechSearch International, Inc. spoke about "Emerging Trends in Mobile Communications." She focused on the impending application of Through Silicon Via’s (TSV) and how this could be the "holy-grail" for mobile designers to increase processing power, with a smaller package and lower power consumption. But she outlined the prospects of high volume production are still a long way off as TSMC, UMC, and Global Foundries are not yet prepared for high volume production and without fab contributions, the process cannot reach volume for the mobile device industry until after 2012.
Headed to the Device Packaging Conference today and will follow-up tomorrow with more presentations and exhibitor commentary.
