Growth will be determined by changes in packaging methods.

SEMI and TechSearch International announced that the global semiconductor packaging materials market recorded sales of $16.7 billion in 2017.

While the slowdown in growth of traditional drivers, smartphones and personal computers (PCs), has led to a decline in material consumption, this decline has been offset by the growth of the cryptocurrency market in 2017 and early 2018. However, it is unlikely that flip chip package shipments to the cryptocurrency market will remain high.

The Global Semiconductor Packaging Materials Outlook report predicts that despite the growth of automotive electronics and high-performance computing, future revenue growth in the materials sector will remain flat due to continued pricing pressures and declining materials consumption, and projects the semiconductor materials market to reach $17.8 billion in 2021. IC leadframes, underfill, and copper wire are expected to show single-digit growth in the materials sector through 2021.

Laminate substrate suppliers involved in flip-chip substrate sales for cryptocurrencies experienced volume growth in 2017, but growth is slowing due to the increasing use of multi-die solutions and the shift to wafer-level packaging (WLP), including fan-out WLP. WLP dielectric and chemical plating suppliers are expected to see significant growth as the adoption of advanced packaging continues.