Beancounters at SEMI have added up some numbers and divided them by their shoe size and decided that Taiwan has to hand over the crown to South Korea, at least in the first quarter.

Equipment billings in Korea came to $3.53 billion in the first quarter of 2017, up 110 percent from a year earlier, while equipment billings in Taiwan increased 84 percent on year to $3.48 billion.

China saw the largest sequential growth among all regions in the first quarter of 2017 with equipment billings surging 74 percent on quarter to $2.01 billion, SEMI said. China was the third largest semiconductor equipment market during the quarter.

Equipment billings in North America grew three per cent while Japan grew 19 percent Europe slipped one percent to a fairly miserable $920 million, according to SEMI.

Worldwide semiconductor manufacturing equipment billings reached a record $13.1 billion in the first quarter of 2017, according to SEMI. The billings figure was 14 percent higher than the prior quarter, and 58 percent than last year.