Sapphire material market to exceed $200 million this year

LYON, FRANCE: Yole Developpement has released the 'Sapphire Substrate Market 2010' report, which provides a complete analysis of the two main applications targeted by the sapphire substrates along with key market metrics. It describes the involvement of the major material suppliers and gives a snapshot of the sapphire industry playground.

Sapphire material market exceeded $200M in 2010 despite downturn
Sapphire product is serving mainly two applications in the electronics field: GaN-based LED and RF devices, both for mobile phones (Silicon-on-Sapphire “SoS” technology).

The sapphire substrate market for electronic applications has reached a market volume of approximately 9 million wafers (2” equivalent) for LED augmented by some 10’s of thousands 6” and 8” wafers for SoS RF applications in 2009.

Despite the 2009 economic situation and thanks mostly to LCD LED backlight applications, the c-plan sapphire wafer market grew +4 percent over 2009 compared to 2008 in the LED segment.

On the other hand, r-plan sapphire business for SoS applications has been strongly affected by the recession as the main application markets are related to consumer appliances (mainly mobile phones). As a result, a -55 percent revenue decline has been observed on the r-plan side.

2” sapphire price as low as ever but shortage risk could generate turbulence
The price pressure on 2” remains critical and our models showed that most of the suppliers are having a very tiny margin on that material and some of them are even losing money in that business.

The 2” price level, especially in Taiwan, was extremely low and the psychological $10 threshold has probably been reached. However, we stay confident that 2” wafer price will gain +15 percent to 20 percent in 2010 as a shortage situation cannot be excluded.

Indeed, our Demand-Capacity analysis shows a “risk-zone” that should occur during the second half of 2010, where all the planned capacity won’t be fully installed, facing a demand in LED that can create some turbulence. Now, we feel comfortable saying that this stress period should end early in 2011 with the full ramp-up of sapphire producers.

Is 6” sapphire economically viable for LED?
2009 saw the introduction of first industrial tools running 6” diameter for LED manufacture. It is still unclear how 6” sapphire can bring a strong added-value on the LED manufacturing cost as the market price of these substrates stays very high in comparison to $/sq. inch costs for 2” and 4” wafers.

We ran our proprietary Sapphire Growth Cost Model tool and found that only Kyropulos and EFG growth techniques could generate a sub $6/sq. inch c-plan wafer cost in 6” diameter, which is again very expensive compared to smaller diameter materials.

Japan captures almost half the business
With more than 44 percent market share, Japanese sapphire producers are again leading the business in 2009. Kyocera and Namiki are now collecting more than $100M in sapphire revenues for both substrates and non-substrate (Optical applications) products. Shinkosha and Sumitomo Metal Mining are also part of the TOP-12 players.

In the US, Rubicon has faced a severe downturn on the r-plan segment as its main client Peregrine has strongly reduced its orders. In Europe, Monocrystal Plc. remains the number one actor.

This report is priced at €3,990.