Fuelled by AI infrastructure and strong logic and memory demand, the global semiconductor market surged nearly 19% in H1 2025, prompting the industry to lift its forecast.
The global semiconductor market maintained strong momentum in the first half of 2025, reaching US $346 billion in revenue; an 18.9% increase year‑on‑year, according to the latest figures from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) organisation.
The report highlighted that the growth was fuelled by surging demand for logic and memory products, particularly for data centre infrastructure and emerging AI edge applications. Logic sales climbed 37%, while memory rose 20%.
“The performance of Logic and Memory far exceeded earlier expectations, underscoring the strength of demand from AI‑driven computing and cloud infrastructure investments,” WSTS noted.
Other categories also posted gains, with Sensors up 16%, and both analogue and micro segments registering modest 4% growth. However, discretes fell 4% and optoelectronics slipped 0.5%, marking isolated declines in an otherwise expanding market.
The robust first‑half results prompted WSTS to revise its 2025 full-year market forecast upward to US$728 billion, representing 15.4% annual growth: a 4‑percentage‑point increase from its Spring 2025 projection.
The forecast for 2026 has also edged higher, with the market now expected to grow 9.9% to US$800 billion. “The first half of 2025 largely confirms the optimism of our Spring outlook,” WSTS said, emphasising that the changes reflect actual Q2 data incorporated into the original assumptions from June, rather than a wholly new forecast scenario.
For this year, every product segment has seen upward revisions. Logic is now projected to expand 29% for the year, while Memory is forecast to grow 17%; both up by five percentage points compared with earlier expectations.
Regionally, WSTS anticipates all major markets to post growth in 2025, with the Americas and Asia Pacific leading the gains. Europe’s outlook has strengthened, while Japan is projected to register a slight decline.
“Broad-based regional growth indicates the resilience of global semiconductor demand, even as certain segments experience cyclical headwinds,” the organisation commented.
Industry analysts point to sustained investment in AI infrastructure, high‑performance computing, and 5G deployments as key drivers behind the upward momentum. Emerging AI edge devices, designed to process data closer to the user, are also expected to create new demand pockets across logic, memory, and sensor categories.
With a second‑half performance expected to maintain the pace, the semiconductor industry appears set to post one of its strongest annual expansions in recent years, positioning itself for a US$800 billion milestone by 2026.
