SEMI (San Jose, CA and Shanghai, China), the global industry association of manufacturing suppliers to the semiconductor, photovoltaic and display industries, has announced the release of a new report entitled the China LED Fab Industry Report.

From 2010 to 2012, the report forecasts GaN epitaxial wafer production capacity in China will grow over 300 percent to 1,282,000 wafers per month (2-inch equivalents). MOCVD tool installations are expected to grow from a cumulative total of 323 tools in 2010 to over 1000 tools by the end 2012.

Capitalizing on this growth, ten new sapphire-substrate projects have been announced: this is a market currently dominated by non-Chinese suppliers.

According to SEMI, China is currently the world’s leading consumer of solid-state lighting and the leading producer of LCD TVs, the biggest driver of high-brightness LEDs.

The Chinese government has supported both demand and supply sectors of the industry, estimated by some analysts to grow from approximately $10B in 2010 to over $100B worldwide by 2020.

Analysis by other firms, including PennWell Corporation's Strategies Unlimited, indicates that despite the massive investment and incentives in place in China, it is unlikely that all of the investments announced to date will materialize in the 2011-2015 time frame. Nonetheless, by 2015 an additional 1200-2000 multiwafer MOCVD reactors could be installed according to Gaogong LED and Strategies Unlimited research firms.

Report highlights

SEMI China-based market analysts have prepared the new SEMI report, which is based on the SEMI's Opto/LED Fab Watch and Forecast service. This service monitors LED capital spending at over 160 fabs worldwide, and other sources.

The report provides a summary on the rapidly growing LED industry in China, including capital and equipment spending, fab capacity, sales rankings of Chinese LED manufacturers, and sapphire wafer suppliers. The report also includes an update on the subsidy incentives for China fab projects, an update on new LED fab projects, and company profiles of the leading Chinese manufacturers.

The 38-page report is priced at $2,500 for SEMI members and $3,500 for non-SEMI members.