It’s not a time of disaster. The global IC market will grow in 2020

 Even with the disastrous impact of COVID-19 on the global economy, the global IC market is expected to post single-digit growth in 2020 after a 15% decline last year, according to IC Insights.

The average sequential seasonal decline in the first quarter IC market was 2% from 1984 to 2019. IC Insights noted that the market was down only 3% in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, which is slightly below the 36-year average.

Excluding the years following the severe IC industry downturns in 1985 and 2001, IC Insights believes that the 1Q/4Q IC market change is the best indicator of the direction and strength of annual IC market changes. Because the actual 1Q/4Q change will not directly predict the final annual growth of the IC market in a given year, it will accurately describe the expected direction and strength of the annual growth rate of the IC market compared to the previous year.

IC Insights believes that given the typical seasonal characteristics of the IC industry, the first quarter essentially sets the "foundation" for future quarterly IC market growth. In general, when the 1Q/4Q performance of a given year is better than the 1Q/4Q performance of the previous year, it can be expected that the annual growth rate of that year will be higher than the previous year. When the 1Q/4Q performance of the current year is worse than the same period last year, the opposite is true.

Since the 1Q20/4Q19 quarterly IC market change of -3% is much better than the 1Q19/4Q18 IC market change of -17%, IC Insights believes that even taking into account the negative impact of COVID, the annual growth rate of the IC market in 2020 (3%) may be much better than the 15% IC market decline in 2019.