SEMI recently released the Semiconductor Equipment Forecast Report for 2022, predicting that the total sales of global semiconductor manufacturing equipment in 2022 is expected to reach a new high of US $108.5 billion, an increase of 5.9% over the previous industry record of US $102.5 billion in 2021. This record has been broken for three consecutive years.
However, SEMI believes that the global semiconductor manufacturing equipment market is expected to shrink to US $91.2 billion next year, and then recover in 2024 driven by the front-end and back-end sectors.

Ajit Manocha, president and CEO of SEMI, said, “Record setting factory construction has driven the total sales of semiconductor manufacturing equipment to exceed the 100 billion dollar mark for the second consecutive year. Emerging applications in multiple markets set expectations for the significant growth of the semiconductor industry in this decade, which will require further investment to expand capacity.”
From the perspective of each market segment, the wafer plant equipment sector, including wafer processing, wafer manufacturing facilities and mask/scribing equipment, is expected to grow by 8.3% in 2022, reaching a new industry record of $94.8 billion, then decline by 16.8% in 2023, reaching $78.8 billion, and then rise by 17.2% in 2024, reaching $92.4 billion.

The sales of OEM and logic equipment account for more than half of the total equipment revenue of the wafer factory. It is estimated that in 2022, the sales will increase by 16% year on year, reaching $53 billion. This is because the demand for frontier and mature nodes is still strong. It is estimated that investment will decrease in 2023, resulting in a 9% decrease in sales of the whole category.With the weakening demand of enterprises and consumers for memory and storage, it is estimated that the sales of DRAM devices will decline by 10% to $14.3 billion in 2022, 25% to $10.8 billion in 2023, while the sales of NAND devices in 2022 are expected to decline by 4% to $19 billion, and 36% to $12.2 billion in 2023.
Challenging macroeconomic and semiconductor industry conditions are expected to lead to a decline in sales in the back-end equipment sector. After a strong growth of 30% in 2021, it is estimated that the market sales of semiconductor test equipment will decline by 2.6% to US $7.6 billion in 2022, and by 7.3% to US $7.1 billion in 2023. Following a surge of 87% in 2021, it is estimated that the sales of assembly and packaging equipment will decline by 14.9% to US $6.1 billion in 2022, and by 13.3% to US $5.3 billion in 2023. The back-end equipment expenditure is expected to improve in 2024, with the test equipment and assembly and packaging equipment sectors growing by 15.8% and 24.1% respectively.
From a regional perspective, it is estimated that by 2022, Chinese Mainland, Taiwan, China and South Korea will still be the top three regions for equipment spending. Chinese Mainland will take the lead in the market for the first time in 2020, which is expected to continue next year, while Taiwan, China is expected to regain the lead in 2024. Except for South Korea, the equipment expenditure in all regions is expected to increase in 2022, but the equipment expenditure in most regions will decline in 2023, and then resume growth in 2024.