Under the influence of an increasing demand for system-on-chip products, the semiconductor Automated testing equipment (ATE) market is expected to grow steadily. System on chip products are widely being used in wired and wireless communications and consumer electronics.
Rapid increase in the usage of tablets and PDA’s has resulted in a higher demand for faster performance speed and pin counts. Also with the increase of wireless products, the radio frequency connectivity is bound to dominate. The increase in the complexity of the devices used will be propelling the growth of the ATE market.
With more and more consumers using sophisticated tablets and smartphones, the manufacturers will get inspired to provide them products with more innovative and advanced features. This will in turn make players in the ATE market players to strive to come up with more stringent testing methodologies in order to provide fault free devices. In the year 2010, the largest portion of the market share (75.9) was taken by the non-memory semiconductor ATE devices. With the technological advancements in the markets there is an increased demand for providing complex integrated testing methods at low-costs. In order to tide over the CAPEX reductions, manufacturers who make low-end digital devices often resort to in-house testing methods. These testing methods tend to impact the low cost ATE market, though they cannot be compared with high-end testing methods. Other factors that influence the growth of the ATE market are entry of new companies, mergers and acquisitions.