Celebrating Lunar New Year with a Surge in End Demand

Semiconductor equipment order activity increased to 72 °F for the first time in 16 months. Most of the action is coming from the Compute, Mobile, and Memory markets as the end-market demand is recovering and inventories are getting back to balanced levels. Within memory, DRAM is getting a nice tailwind from AI proliferation while there is some weakness hanging over for NAND.

The January data is in from the Taiwanese manufacturers and the sentiment across the board is mostly positive. TSMC increased sales in January on an annual and sequential basis. On the Fabless side, MediaTek grew 2% sequentially and rocketed 99% compared to January 2023, which was the bottom of their monthly sales in the last three years. MediaTek is getting a boost from the recovering consumer market, especially in Asia. Confirming an improvement in the end markets.