However, all the growth will be accounted for by growth in sales at geometries below 40nm.
The <40nm pure-play foundry market is expected to increase 24 percent to $16.1 billion in 2015 compared to $13.0 billion in 2014. In contrast, pure-play foundry sales of ≥40nm devices are forecast to decline 2 percent to $28.8 billion.
The figure shows sales of ≤45nm devices from the top four pure-play foundries on a quarterly basis for 2014 and 2015.
Market leader TSMC has nearly two-thirds of its sales (63 percent) built using ≤45nm technology. TSMC is forecast to receive about $5.1 billion from 20nm node business and about $0.6 billion from 16nm devices. The company began volume shipments of its 16nm devices in 3Q15.
TSMC's close rivals UMC has only about one third of its 2015 sales set to come from ≤45nm technology and China's SMIC is expected to sell only $363 million worth of ≤45nm ICs in 2015.
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Pure-play foundry sales to bounce back, says IC Insights