There is a growing sense of uncertainty about the future of the Japanese electronics gas-related market due to the bilateral political issues between USA and China as well as Japan and Korea. However, the gas producers and the related equipment manufacturers are not necessarily in a pessimistic-oriented mood. Because, following the large-scale investment by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) of Taiwan this year, the Japanese semiconductor and electronics gas-related equipment manufacturers are receiving orders and there are increasing enquiries for specialty gases.

In fact there was a substantial decrease of 18.9% in the average sales (3 months) in July amounting to JPY153.07 billion of Japan-made equipment comparing with the previous term according to SEAJ’s announcement on August 19. However, there was actually an increase of 11.2% comparing with the previous month.
As for the sales index of semiconductor producing equipment, it is commonly understood that a comparison with the previous month instead of the previous year is important. As a matter of fact, the negative trend from April to June (particularly serious drop of 22.2% in June) turned out to be recovered.
While Samsung Electronics and Toshiba Memory postpone their capital investments, they say the only active TSMC might have led the market. Some equipment manufacturers say, “We have orders and do not think that the situation is so serious.”
However, the consumption of specialty gases is not growing due to the declined operation rate of the domestic and Korean semiconductor plants. The trend of consumables can be checked by the delivered quantity of silicon wafers. The delivered area for the second quarter of 2019 was 2.983 billion square inch, a decrease of 2,2% compared with the previous term (January to March), according to SEMI’s announcement on July 23. In terms of comparison with the previous year it was a decrease of 5.6%.

The delivered quantity of silicon wafer cannot meet the demand of SPG completely, but as a trend, when the quantity of the wafers applied to the device decreases, the SPG for forming a film decreases accordingly. From a global viewpoint, the operation rate has surely declined. Most of the gas companies close their financial account in March, but the SPG producers are quite pessimistic saying “We do not find any factor for recovery after October.” 　

However, the fact that the electronics gas equipment market has not so much declined as the past silicon cycle stagnation despite the arising trade battles is telling the change in the semiconductor IC market. It shows that the applicable scope so far limited to PCs and cell phones has been greatly spread out to automobiles and all infrastructures. The hardware for electronics has become more and more important.