After a 6 percent decline in IC unit shipments in 2019 and an 8 percent increase in 2020, IC Insights forecasts that IC unit shipments will grow a whopping 21 percent this year. Shipments in 2021 are expected to reach 391.2 billion, more than 11 times the 34.1 billion shipped more than 30 years ago in 1990.

The compound annual growth rate of IC shipments in 2020-2025 is expected to be 11 percent, 5 percentage points higher than the unit compound annual growth rate in 2015-2020. While ignoring five-year CAGR periods with unusually high or low points, IC Insights sees the long-term outlook for IC unit shipments at a compound annual growth rate of 7% to 8%, slightly lower than its 30-year growth rate of 9%.

This illustrates how rare it is for IC shipments to decline, with 2019 marking the fifth time in the history of the IC industry that IC shipments have declined (the previous four years were 1985, 2001, 2009, and 2012), and there have never been two consecutive years of declining IC shipments.

The picture shows quarterly IC unit shipments compared to the forecast trend line from 2005 to 2021. In 2008, with the global recession in full swing in the second half of the year, the underlying demand for ics dropped significantly.

From mid-2008 to 2015, the CAGR trend line for IC unit sales decreased from a historical CAGR of 9% to 6%. One of the main reasons for this is that global GDP grew by an average of just 2.1% during the eight-year period. Moreover, even with a 6% decline in IC unit shipments in 2019, the 2016-2021 quarter IC unit shipment trend line is expected to increase by three percentage points to 9%.