Global semiconductor market revenue is expected to grow by 15.8% in 2018, to reach $498 billion by the end of the year, and to slow to 4.4% and 4.3% in the next two years, respectively.

Excluding memory, semiconductor revenue will grow by 8.7%, more than last year, suggesting strong growth in microprocessors (MPUs and MCUs) and ASIC.

Expected revenue growth in the automotive market will be particularly high, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.4% from 2017 to 2022. The growth forecast is based on the accelerated development of Advanced Driving Assisted Systems (ADAS), enhanced interconnection and information entertainment capabilities, as well as sales growth associated with numerous automotive afterwear products.

In 2018, mobile and tablet revenues were boosted by higher average selling prices (ASPs) in the data processing market, which included a large number of corporate and personal computing electronics products, while the number of units shipped remained essentially unchanged compared with the previous year. Data center server revenue also increased because of richer system configurations and higher component costs, resulting in CAGR staying at 10% from 2017 to 2022.

He Hui, chief analyst at IHS China Semiconductor Industry, said that the widespread adoption of the corporate and personal cloud will be the next major driver of the semiconductor industry. The rise of AI applications and the layout of AI ecosystems by Internet technology giants will greatly increase the demand for storage products and high-performance computing chips. In China, the application of IoT + AI will increase the demand of cloud computing and edge computing, resulting in a large number of new edge computing and terminal device node requirements. These will become the main growth areas of semiconductor chips. For China's chip design companies, joining and relying on these ecosystems to provide personalized product design closer to user needs will be a huge growth opportunity in the future.