Fan-in packaging has been a successful and steadily growing platform for over a decade. However, fan-in packaging should face a challenging future, announces Yole Développement (Yole), the “More than Moore” market research and strategy consulting company. Indeed, despite unchanged market drivers, Fan-In packaging is showing an uncertain future with a slowing down smartphone market and the growing adoption of system-in-package (SiP) technologies. The integration of fan-in functions in SiP could disrupt the fan-in market.
Fan-In Packaging: Business Update 2016 report from Yole is the 5th edition. This year, Yole’s advanced packaging team proposes a market overview of the Fan-In landscape with updated market figures and technology roadmaps from 2015 to 2021. The consulting company investigates the industrial supply chain with a detailed analysis of the market positioning of each player. This report also offers a detailed analysis of the SiP impact on the market with two scenarios.
The fan-in packaging platform remains appealing as an inherently unmatched combination of smallest package form factor and low cost. Due to these features, historically it found penetration in form-driven handsets and tablets and has maintained growth within these devices.
“At Yole we estimate that more than 90% of fan-in packages today are found in the mobile segment”, comments Andrej Ivankovic, Technology & Market Analyst, Advanced Packaging & Semiconductor Manufacturing at Yole. “With respect to fan-in adoption, in today’s high-end smartphones already more than 30% of all packages are Fan-In packages. Therefore, fan-in packaging spread in the sweet spot mobile segment continues.”
Many companies are today fearing a general slowdown due to smartphone market saturation: against a 35% growth in 2013, Yole announces 8% in 2016 and 6% by 2020 (1). According to the analysts, the market needs to reinvent itself to avoid commoditization. Advanced packaging companies are so searching for new growth opportunities…
The biggest challenge the fan-in platform will be facing in the future is the functional integration of devices into SiP form. Under its new fan-in report, Yole’s analysts indicate the impact of SiP growth on fan-in unit production, decreasing the overall compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 9% to 6%.
In order to increase functionality and potentially decrease overall time to market and packaging costs, multichip packaging in the form of SiPs is already under way. While a variety of SiPs are already present in smartphones, a stronger push for further integration of multiple dies in one package can be expected especially in the radio frequency (RF) and power management domains. This implies that as a consequence of functional integration, a significant portion of fan-in dies could be integrated into SiPs. The consulting company Yole analyzed in its report two scenarios: a disruptive SiP impact and a negligible SiP impact on the Fan-In platform.
In the case of negligible SiP impact, the fan-in packaging services market is expected to rise from US$ 3.1 billion in 2015 to US$ 4.9 billion to in 2021 with a 8% CAGR. The Fan-In wafer count is expected to rise from 3.7 to 5.9 million 300mm eq. wafers from 2015 to 2021, respectively, with a CAGR of 8%. Yole’s market figures indicate the impact of SiP growth on Fan-In wafer production, decreasing the overall CAGR from 8% to -2%. The impact of SiP growth is greater on wafer level than on unit level, due to the size of particular devices expected to be integrated first.
Yole’s report brings a full revenue, wafer, and unit forecast by IC device type from 2015 to 2021 as well as a detailed impact of SiP growth. A detailed description of this report is available on i-micronews.com, advanced packaging reports section.
Source:
(1) Sensors for Cellphones and Tablets 2016 report, Yole Développement, Jun. 2016
RF : Radio Frequency
Source: http://www.yole.fr
