April 29, 2002

While the global IC industry was generally mired in a slowdown in 2001, China's chip market reached more than US$15 billion, u 20% on a year-to-year basis, according to figures released by China's CCID.

The output value of the global semicondurctor industry amounted to US$139 billion in 2001, down 32% from last year.

According to a survey by Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Taiwan's chip market reached around US$10 billion in 2001, down 37,6% from the preceding year, while in China 24,4 billion Ics were sold last year, up 7,1%. Hit by the worldwide sluggishness in 2001m China made and exported chips woth US$822, down 17.22% on a year-to-year basis.

Despite the overall global slide in teh output value of chips, the fact that China managed to achieve nearly 30% growth in the world's chip market is notable.

The CCID said that China's chip market accounted for 13% of the gobal market in 2001, up 7% from 2000. CCID said that China had replaced Japan as the second largest chip market in Asia and Pacific Area.

Not everyone is inclined to take CCID`s figures at face value, however. Taiwan's ITRI thinks that China's statistics are considerably exaggerated, and estimates the growth of te Chinese chip market at the rather lower level of 8%. Even so, growth of this order represents an impressivie achievement against the overall global decline in 2001, analysts in Taipei said.