Despite the common belief, OSAT (Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test) companies are very innovative. Many look at TSMC or Synopsys and consider their R&D work as innovative. But actually, semiconductor assembly industry is as innovative as any other company in the industry. We just don’t hear about it.
Semiconductor packaging companies develop technologies constantly but they, unfortunately, don’t enjoy from the ‘grace’ that is associated with EDA or semiconductor foundries. But if you take, for example, the iPhone, many of the features available today in an iPhone are there thanks to advanced packaging technologies.
The OSAT industry is constantly under pressure to deliver innovative solutions, either small sized packaging, or very high performance and high-power packaging solutions. It seems there is always something they need to develop for the future.
We wrote about the relentless development of the semiconductor packaging industry here.
OSAT Market Data
IC packaging market share in 2016 was 54B USD.
Complex packaging (2.5D, 3D, FanOut) will grow in rate of 7.5% / year from 2017 to 2022, while the entire packaging business will grow in rate of 3.5% / year from 2017 to 2022. (source: Yole Développement).
There are over 300 IC packaging companies world-wide. The table shows the top 10 players but there are many small vendors addressing their local market. You can find them here.
Merger and Acquisitions
Merger and acquisitions in the OSAT industry is somewhat unusual but in 2015-2017 were saw some consolidation activities in the market. Here are some of them:
