On July 6, the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan made a forecast presentation regarding the demand of equipment to produce semiconductors and FPDs.

SEAJ’s new chairman Toshiki Kawai (CEO of Tokyo Electron) who took office in June this year addressed in his greeting speech, saying “While the world situation stays unstable as seen in the progress of inflation, interest rate rises and energy cost hikes in Europe and America, there has been a progress in digitalization like ICT, 5G and 6G. Furthermore, more demand for semiconductors is deemed to be promising in the fields of Chat GPT and autonomous drivinglevel (2022). Our semiconductor equipment production should cope with it.”

He further commented, “The semiconductor equipment production marked the record high result amounting to 3 trillion 9222 billion dollars in 2022. Although we anticipate a decrease by 23% of capital investment to semiconductor equipment in 2023, we forecast a recovery in 2024 with an increase by 30%. In 2025 we suppose attainment to the record high performance with an increase by 10% amounting to 4 trillion 317.7 billion dollars.”