SUMMARY

The Development and Characteristics of the Semiconductor Industry

---- Hidden Wave of Semiconductor by Larger Scale Integration and Larger Yield Rate ----

OKADA Tetsutaro

The semiconductor industry dates from after the war, and it developed remarkably in 1970's and has developed since then. Its has such originality as no other industry has.

The production of semiconductor of Japan had got ahead of the U.S. on the market share in the world in 1986. The Jump up hypothesis by ITAMI Hiroyuki explains why reversal happened. He said that Japanese superiority would continue permanently because the most important factor in the reversal is due to constitution of Japanese companies. But, in 1993, between Japan and the U.S. these positions reversed again. Moreover, Korean companies has caught up with Japan, and a Korean company has won the first share of memory devices. We must define the characteristics of the semiconductor industry in order to make these process clear.

The semiconductor industry dates from 1947, when the point contact transistor was invented. Germanium had been used as material of semiconductor at first. It is easily affected by intense heat. Therefore it is difficult to be used for military use, ---- for example, a computer equipped on a rocket missile. The U.S. army expend a subsidy to develop silicon transistor and integrated circuit (IC) which are hard to be broken by intense heat. Consequently, the U.S. has developed earlier than other countries in this field. (Section 1)

In Japan, there was scarcely military demand, therefore silicon technology was transferred from the U.S. later, and IC technology did not also develop until civilian demand for desk calculator and so on did. (Section 2)

Generally speaking, the development of IC was towed by demand for desk calculator. At that time, however, the total sales of desk calculator hardly increased from 1973 to 1985. A statistics indicates that though the quantity of output increased sharply, the total sales was constant, for the price fell down rapidly. This price drop is caused by rising from high integration and ascent of yield rate. (Section 3) Moreover, appearance of technology to use integrated circuit in common amplified this effect.

The phenomenon that the total sales is constant in spite of the sharp increase in the quantity appeared in not only desk calculator but also semiconductor industry. But, a case in the semiconductor is different from that in the desk calculator as semiconductor has repeated waves that is grounded on a change of generations under larger scale integration and higher function. The form of development of semiconductor industry (called Wave of Semiconductor) have peculiarity as follows:

First stage; the price of semiconductor manufactures tend to decline constantly according to the increase of cumulative outputs. But total sales of the manufactures increase while the price is in higher level, because increase of the quantity is taken into account beyond price drop. Second stage; when the manufactures of current generation is main production, the growth of the total sales become constant because the price falls sharply notwithstanding the favorable increase of the quantity of outputs. Third stage; when the price become calm in lower level, the demand of the current manufactures accord with saturation and then the generation is shifted toward new one. The quantity of outputs begin to decrease with gentle decline of the price, therefore the total sales decline too. (Section 4)

The hypothesis of the Wave of Semiconductor explained as follows: since there is intense competition on current generation of the manufactures, manufacturers must proceed with R&D and investment against next one. Accordingly, it is defined that a result of competition among U.S., Japan, Korea and so on depend on not the Jump up hypothesis by ITAMI Hiroyuki but the hypothesis of the Wave of Semiconductor. (Section 5)

Article (Japanese Only)

(C) OKADA Tetsutaro, 1995
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OKADA Tetsutaro tetsuta at ec.kagawa-u.ac.jp
Faculty of Economics, Kagawa University