SEMICON JAPAN 2015 (organized by SEMI) was held for 3 days from December 16 thru 18 at Tokyo Big Sight of the international exhibition hall. Distributors of equipment and machinery relating to industrial gases also joined this exhibition in which they proposed the latest technologies and appealed their expanding activities into R&D, consigned assessments and non-semiconductor areas.

The number of the visitors during the 3 days was 60,378 (60,211 last year as announced by the organizer) and participants in the seminars accounted for 9,704 (9,014 persons last year) exceeding a little bit those of last year.

Briefed below is the press interview held at Tokyo Big Sight on December 15 the preceding day of SEMICON JAPAN, in which there was a forecast of about 2% growth in 2016 in the world market of production machinery and materials respectively. Attendees at the press interview were Kazuma Sekiya (President of DISCO) Chairman of SEMICON JAPAN Promotion Committee, Jonathan Davis (Global Vice President of Advocacy of SEMI international), Eric Kisch (U.S. Embassy Commercial Service) and Osamu Nakamura (President of SEMI Japan).

Chairman Sekiya said in his opening remarks, “Although the domestic customers of semiconductor production market are not so active now, the Japanese manufacturers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and materials (for production) who are SEMI members supporting the semiconductor producing industry still keep their competitive power so well across the world. In the midst of the situation exploring a way to enliven the semiconductor market, a variety of plans as a new trend are being built up with a theme like IoT based on the start to use Tokyo Big Sight from last year.

Furthermore, under the circumstances of the recent growth in pursuit of higher sophistication and complication of materials, IoT and electronic parts, there is also a change in the current market trend in which once-depreciated fabs can act now to meet users’ requirements even without cutting edge means. The exhibition at this time has been planned to respond to such a change in the current rip.”

Jonathan Davis, SEMI’s global vice president of advocacy said, “I would like to appeal that we have a role to lead the global electronics market and our industry is a fascinating society of innovation for young people.” Then he described the market trend and foresight of semiconductors, IC, semiconductor producing equipment and materials as follows:

Regarding the equipment market in 2015, the sales of new equipment is forecast to be USD37.3 billion, 0.6% less than last year, but in 2016 there will be a recovery with an increase of 1 to 2% led by 3D NAND and MPU. On the other hand, the production capacity will grow at a lower pace and the material market in 2016 will see a growth of 2 to 3% in terms of the delivered area of wafers, and the pre-process material will expand up to USD24.5 billion and the package material up to USD20 billion (the Japanese material market in 2015 amounted to about USD6.7 billion which accounts for about 15% of the world market, the pre-process market including gases marked USD4.27 billion. In 2016 it is forecast that there will be an increase by 1% amounting to USD4.33 billion. As for 200mm fabs, he expected that there will be extensive investments to expansion projects and new plans by 2018. It was followed by Nakamura, president of SEMI Japan who outlined the upcoming exhibition and explained the planned highlights.

SEMICON Japan 2016 will be held from December 14 thru 16, 2016 at Tokyo Big Sight.