On January 18, the Semiconductor Equipment Association of Japan (SEAJ) announced at Tokyo Kaikan its forecast of demand (2024 to 2025) for semiconductor and FPD equipment as of January 2024.　

Before the announcement Chairman Kawai said in his opening speech, “Last year there appeared cutting-edge technologies like Chat GPT and Generative AI which showed a great potential in the ICT industry. The demand for equipment for production decreased by 19.6% in 2023, but it is expected to recover in 2024. The world market of semiconductor is anticipated to grow up to a one-trillion dollar scale in 2030. A furthermore growth is expected.　
　
Kiyoshi Watanabe chief executive of SEAJ described the outline of the forecast saying,”The Japanese sales of equipment for 2023 was comparatively good in the export to the Chinese market during 2023 but capital investments as a whole decreased. With regard to the FPD equipment business sluggish due to the declined investment in 2023.”

It was followed by the speech of Masatomo Takahashi Chief of Research and Statistics Commission referring to the semiconductor industry, in which he commented, “The sales of semiconductor equipment in 2023 was forecasted to be 3,177 billion yen which is a decrease by 19.0%.

In 2024, following the logic foundry, DRAM will be expected to recover fully in the second half of the year, there will be an increase by 27% amounting to 4438.3 billion yen. In 2025, as it is expected that each country is planning a large-scaled investment, we forecast an increase by 10% amounting to 4438.3 billion yen.

Regarding the FPD industry, Kateyuki Hirai chief commissioner of the FPD committee dedicated to research and statistics said, “The capital investment of FPD producing devices halved in the 2023 calendar year comparing with the same term of the previous year. On the other hand, Korea and China announce large-scaled investments to OLED from the end of November 2023. Therefore, we forecast the sales of FPD producing equipment in 2023 amounting to 321.1 billion yen down 25.0% and in 2024 amounting to 353.2 billion yen up 10%.” 　

After the announcement of demand forecast, they held SEAJ 2024 New Year Celebration without any restriction after 4 years. After Chairman Kawai’s salutation, there were
speeches by guests of Yuichi Hotta president of JASM and Atsuyoshi Koike president of Rapidus. Many people attended including the members of SEAJ.