Foreign suppliers dominate chip market

China's semiconductor use has hit a record high and accounts for more than half of the global market, but the country is overly dependent on foreign suppliers for relevant products, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers report issued on Thursday.

With an 8.7 percent growth in 2012, China's semiconductor use was 52.5 percent of the total worldwide, said a PwC report titled China's Impact on the Semiconductor Industry - 2013 Update. Semiconductors act as an engine now driving an increasing amount of the technology in people's lives.

The growth in Chinese semiconductor use is a remarkable contrast to the global market for semiconductors, which experienced an overall decline of 3 percent in 2012, the report said.

China is expected to continue its domination of semiconductor purchasing in the foreseeable future with its market share possibly reaching 60 percent by 2017, Raman Chitkara, PwC's global technology and semiconductor leader, said in an interview with China Daily.

"One of the major reasons why China has grown so big in semiconductor consumption is that the country is rising to become the world's capital of electronic manufacturing," Chitkara said. In addition, the semiconductor content in electronic device production in China is higher than in the rest of the world, he added.

China now accounts for almost 90 percent of global PC production, more than half of television manufacturing and more than three-quarters of mobile phone and digital camera production. "These items tend to have a higher semiconductor content," Chitkara said.