Prospects of system IC semiconductor industry

The current semiconductor downturn we are witnessing is primarily caused by the downturn of IT industry starting from the later part of year 2000. The semiconductor business performance of year 2000 was exceptionally good, which resulted in an aggressive industry-wide capacity expansion. As both corporate and consumer's demand for PCs and IT infrastructures such as servers and network equipments got softened along with the weak demand for mobile phones in conjunction with the slow-down of the economy, the down-turn cycle of this semiconductor business seemed to have lasted longer into an L-shaped curve rather than a V-shaped one. Looking back last 40 years, it has been a well-known fact that the semiconductor business has a typical cyclic nature. However, the important factor is that it has been a continuously growing industry. In this talk, three areas of topics will be covered. The first is the market prospects. The second is the technology prospects, and the last will be the direction of Korea semiconductor industry in the future.