Features
This industry features a number of distinct characteristics that position it uniquely in the economy and in the global competitive arena. These include:
- The role of the industry as technology enabler. The semiconductor industry is widely recognized as a key driver for economic growth in its role as a multiple lever and technology enabler for the whole electronics value chain. In other words, from a worldwide base semiconductor market of $213 billion in 2004, the industry enables the generation of some $1,200 billion in electronic systems business and $5,000 billion in services, representing close to 10% of world GDP.
- Continuous growth but in a cyclical pattern with high volatility. While the current 20 year annual average growth of the semiconductor industry is on the order of 13%, this has been accompanied by equally above-average market volatility, which can lead to significant if not dramatic cyclical swings.
- The need for high degrees of flexibility and innovation in order to constantly adjust to the rapid pace of change in the market. Many products embedding semiconductor devices often have a very short life cycle. At the same time, the rate of constant price-performance improvement in the semiconductor industry is staggering. As a consequence, changes in the semiconductor market not only occur extremely rapidly but also anticipate changes in industries evolving at a slower pace. Yet another consequence of this rapid pace is that established market strongholds can be displaced very quickly.
Read more about this topic: Semiconductor Industry
Famous quotes containing the word features:
“It is a tribute to the peculiar horror of contemporary life that it makes the worst features of earlier times—the stupefaction of the masses, the obsessed and driven lives of the bourgeoisie—seem attractive by comparison.”
—Christopher Lasch (b. 1932)
“However much we may differ in the choice of the measures which should guide the administration of the government, there can be but little doubt in the minds of those who are really friendly to the republican features of our system that one of its most important securities consists in the separation of the legislative and executive powers at the same time that each is acknowledged to be supreme, in the will of the people constitutionally expressed.”
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“These, then, will be some of the features of democracy ... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, particolored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)