IC Insights has forecast that China-produced ICs will represent only 19.4% of the country's IC market in 2025, a fraction of the country's "Made in China 2025" goal of 70%.
Although China has been the largest consuming country for ICs since 2005, it does not necessarily mean that large increases in IC production within China would immediately follow. IC production in China represented 15.9% of its US$143.4 billion IC market in 2020, up from 10.2% in 2010, IC Insights said. Moreover, IC Insights forecast that this share will increase by 3.5pp from 2020 to 19.4% in 2025.
Of the US$22.7 billion worth of ICs manufactured in China last year, China-headquartered companies produced only US$8.3 billion accounting for only 5.9% of the country's US$143.4 billion IC market, IC Insights noted. TSMC, SK Hynix, Samsung, Intel, UMC, and other foreign companies that have IC wafer fabs located in China produced the rest.
Of the US$8.3 billion in ICs manufactured by China-based companies, about US$2.3 billion was from IDMs and US$6.0 billion was from pure-play foundries like SMIC, IC Insights continued.
If China-based IC manufacturing rises to US$43.2 billion in 2025 as IC Insights forecasts, China-based IC production would still represent only 7.5% of the total forecast 2025 worldwide IC market of US$577.9 billion. Even after adding a significant markup to some of the Chinese producers' IC sales (many Chinese IC producers are foundries that sell their ICs to companies that re-sell these products to the electronic system producers), China-based IC production would still likely represent only about 10% of the global IC market in 2025, according to IC Insights.
