Mandates Reshape Market for Automotive Electronic Stability Control Systems
Driven by new government mandates, global market revenue for Microelectromechanical System (MEMS) sensors used for automotive Electronic Stability Control (ESC) is set to nearly double from 2006 to 2012, according to iSuppli Corp.
Worldwide revenue for MEMS ESC sensors will rise to $715 M in 2012, up from $378 M in 2006. Global shipments of complete ESC systems are expected to rise to 47.7 million units in 2012, up from 23.1 million in 2007.
European Semiconductor Market
Worldwide sales of semiconductors of $21.6 B in June were 8% higher than the $20.0 B reported for June 2007, the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) reports. A flat growth rate can be observed if June sales are compared with the $21.5 B reported for May 2008. Year-to-date (YTD) sales of $127.5 B are 5.4% higher than in the first half of the year 2007 when sales were $121 B.
On the basis of the same comparison, the figures also show that the performance of the European semiconductor market followed a similar positive trend to the world market with a growth rate of 5.1%. Looking at product categories, strong growth was observed for Optoelectronics (31.7%) mainly for industrial, automotive and mobile phones applications, Micro Processing Unit (MPU) (13.2%) for PCs and notebooks but also special purpose ICs for industrial (28.5%), communication (15%) and automotive (9.9%) applications. More in detail, European semiconductor sales in June 2008 amounted to $3.369 B according to WSTS, up 1.2% versus the previous month. This corresponds to an increase of 5.1% compared to the same month last year. On a YTD basis semiconductor sales increased by 1.9% versus the same period in the year 2007.
