Philippe Brassac looks back at what we can take from 2022

The burgeoning semiconductor industry of the 1950s was highly integrated, involving players who spanned the entire value chain, from design to manufacturing, assembly, testing and packaging. As time went on, the industry embarked on a frenetic race towards miniaturisation, resulting in a significant increase in the density of transistors that could be etched onto each square millimetre of silicon wafer. Since 1965, this density has doubled roughly every 18 months. The semiconductor industry today can etch as many as 300 million transistors per square millimetre. But this has also resulted in a fragmented and globalised industry.

While inflation dominated proceedings in 2022, in 2023 the spotlight will be on growth.

High 2022 results

India’s multilateral agenda looks set to be very full in 2023, with the country holding the presidency of not only the G20 but also the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). These twin roles nicely illustrate the ambiguous position India is cultivating on the international stage.

Will 2022 go down in Chinese history as a year unlike any other, or will it mark the beginning of a long, slow decline for the country? Over the last few months, there have been more and more studies looking at whether China has the capacity to become the world’s leading economy. This suggests that, far from catching up with the United States sometime in the 2030s, as had been the prevailing assumption before Covid, China may never catch up with the US [1].