Americas chip market soars as Asian growth slows

Market news | December 7, 2024

By Peter Clarke

There was a glimmer of an upturn for Europe buried in recently published chip market sales data for October that showed the Americas region up by more than 50 percent year-on-year.

The Americas chip market accelerated to a three-month average figure of US$18.67 billion in October, up 54.0 percent on the same 3MMA in October 2023, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). The Americas sales figure for October was also up 8.3 percent on September, an unusually high jump for sequential averaged data.

The phenomenal growth was a contrast to the three Asian regions reported by SIA. China’s growth fell from 22.9 percent in September to 17.0 percent. This growth yielded an October 3MMA market of US$16.20 billion. Japan’s growth fell from 7.7 to 7.4 percent and the rest of Asia Pacific saw its growth slow from 18.4 percent in September to 12.1 percent in October.

Sick, but with hope

Meanwhile Europe remains the sick person of the global chip market. The European chip market contracted by 7.0 percent year-on-year to US$4.48 billion. The now steadily growing Japanese chip market could exceed that of Europe’s in November’s SIA figures due to be announced early in January 2025.

However, on a sequential basis the European market grew 1.3 percent, second only to the Americas region and ahead of the growth rate of all three Asian regions. That may be a sign that Europe could rise from its sick bed in 2025 as excess inventory in industrial, automotive and communications infrastructure is consumed. In addition Europe’s year-on-year market contraction started to reduce in August.

The overall result was that the global chip market growth abated slightly in October to a still strong 22.1 percent, to yield a chip market worth US$56.88 billion.

The pattern remains consistent with a semiconductor market driven by an AI boom and the extreme success of Nvidia alongside returning consumer electronics spend mixed with sluggishness in the automotive, industrial and infrastructure markets.

Three-month average of chip sales by geographic region for October and September 2024. Source: SIA/WSTS.

“The global semiconductor market is closing out 2024 on a high note, as the industry reached its highest-ever monthly sales total in October and month-to-month sales increased for the seventh consecutive month,” said John Neuffer, CEO of the SIA, in a statement. “Total annual sales are now projected to increase by nearly 20 percent in 2024 – higher than earlier forecasts – and then continue to grow by double-digits in 2025,” he added referring to the recent Fall forecast of the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organization (see Europe’s chip market shrinks as WSTS trims forecasts for 2025).

Monthly data is given by the SIA as a three-month average although the source of the data, WSTS, tracks sales monthly basis. The SIA and other regional semiconductor industry bodies opt to use averaged data because it evens out the actual data that typically shows troughs at the beginnings of quarters and peaks at the ends of quarters.