Sluggish semi recovery to continue in 2025, says Future Horizons

Future Horizons has little hope of the mainstream semiconductor market picking up pace in 2025. With the global economy, unit demand and capacity still “flashing red” and the average selling price “flashing amber,” there’s no solid basis for a speedy recovery, says the market research firm’s CEO Malcolm Penn (via EE News and Electronics Weekly). “If you’re not in GPUs or HBM, it’s not that brilliant,” he points out.

Last year, the semiconductor market grew 20 percent, largely because of ASP rather than unit growth. It could take four quarters before the balance is restored. Capacity utilization resides at 70 percent and it could take as much as two years to fill up fabs completely. Penn notes that capex may have peaked in Q1 2023 but is still running high at 15 percent of sales.

Future Horizons is forecasting 15 percent growth for the semiconductor industry this year, which is in line with predictions from WSTS (11.2 percent) and Gartner (14 percent).