The latest news shows that the chip shortage that has plagued the world seems to have begun to ease. The price trends of various types of chips have clearly differentiated. The prices of some automotive and industrial control chips continue to rise, and both production and sales

International Electronic Business News on the 27th The latest news shows that the wave of core shortages plaguing the world seems to have begun to ease. The price trends of various types of chips have clearly differentiated. The prices of some automotive and industrial control chips continue to rise, and production and sales are booming; while display driver chips, Prices of analog chips, consumer MCUs, DRAM and NAND Flash, GPU, and MLCC six types of chips continue to drop, and some chips have serious inventory backlogs...

1, display driver chips

Market research agency TrendForce pointed out that consumption in the first half of 2022 The sexual electronics market has been impacted by the weakening effects of the stay-at-home economy, the epidemic, international tensions, and high inflation. Coupled with the traditional off-season, the demand for related applications such as PCs, laptops, TVs, and smartphones has significantly cooled down. The

display driver chip is the first to be affected. According to relevant media reports, due to oversupply, display driver chips suffered a series of order cuts in the first half of this year, and prices fell significantly. It is reported that display driver chip manufacturer Novatek recently held a shareholders' meeting and stated that the demand for the company's products has slowed down, resulting in an increase in short-term inventory levels. The market situation in the third quarter is unclear, and the company will adjust inventory and production capacity in the future. In addition, according to recent media reports, some display driver chip manufacturers have significantly reduced the amount of wafer foundry production, by as much as 20 to 30%.

In addition, it is worth noting that recent news shows that the market reflects that Samsung will suspend external procurement before the end of July, mainly for terminal products such as TVs, monitors, and tablet computers. The supply chain has also reported that the ICs supplied to Samsung by large IC design factories will be significantly reduced by 30 to 40% by the end of July. Small and medium-sized IC design factories are even facing the dilemma of stopping supply, which will cause the inventory levels of IC design factories to rise again.

2, consumer MCU

are no different, and consumer MCU have also been in the cold.

In May of this year, according to market price reports, consumer MCU prices fell to varying degrees. Taking the HOLTEK product HT66F004 series as an example, its price has dropped from 3 yuan during normal order scheduling to 1.8 yuan to 2 yuan.

Recently, Cai Rongzong, deputy general manager of the business marketing center of Holtek Semiconductor (HOLTEK) in Taiwan, said when talking about small home appliance MCUs that IC dealers are lowering the prices of consumer MCUs to reduce excess inventory. Cai Rongzong said that the recent decline in consumer MCU prices in mainland China was initiated by IC dealers rather than chip manufacturers themselves. This has begun to adversely affect the market for low-priced MCUs, especially those used in small home appliances.

It is reported that IC dealers in mainland China stocked up consumer MCUs when prices were higher before, and the inventory can last for three to four months. Distributors have recently taken action to lower prices for consumer MCUs due to uncertainty over the demand outlook this year.

3, analog IC

Since the core shortage crisis broke out, analog chip prices have risen for five consecutive quarters. Recently, according to relevant media reports, analog chip prices have shown signs of decline.

reported that Texas Instruments has informed customers that the imbalance between supply and demand will ease in the second half of this year. There was news in the market that the prices of some Texas Instruments chips have "dropped" by as much as 80% in the past two months.

The latest response from Texas Instruments shows that the price has not dropped by 80%. "Sometimes some traders who are not authorized by Texas Instruments will also obtain products from the market and resell them, and price information may also come from these channels."

And According to some media reports, in the spot market, the price of Texas Instruments power management chips has indeed fluctuated. The price of a certain chip has dropped from a peak of 45 yuan to about 3 yuan.

In addition, clues about the price decline of analog chips can also be seen from the performance changes of many analog chip manufacturers. According to incomplete statistics from Global Semiconductor Observation, in the first quarter of this year, 7 of the 221 analog chip companies experienced a decline in performance, and more than half of the companies experienced a slowdown in performance growth.

Industry news shows that a Taiwanese analog chip industry official said that supply and demand are now roughly balanced, and customer demand has indeed declined. Because brand manufacturers are hesitant one after another, system manufacturers have followed suit, fearing that inventories are too high, so they may put on the brakes.

4, DRAM and NAND Flash

In addition, DRAM and NAND Flash are also affected. According to Global Semiconductor Observation data, DRAM and NAND Flash prices continue to decline.

TrendForce pointed out that despite the support of the peak season effect and the increase in DDR5 penetration rate , the DRAM market in the third quarter was still defeated by the negative impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and high inflation leading to weak consumer electronics demand, which in turn caused the overall DRAM inventory to rise, becoming the third The main reason is that DRAM prices fell by 3~8% in the quarter, and it is not ruled out that some product categories such as PCs and smartphones may experience a decline of more than 8%. In the

NAND Flash part, as the output of Kioxia and Western Digital (WDC) increases month by month, the production capacity is obviously sufficient to meet the increase in demand for bits. However, the demand for consumer electronics such as laptops has cooled after the epidemic, resulting in declining orders. Coupled with the slow destocking of smartphone brands due to the epidemic and high inflation, this will lead to oversupply in the NAND Flash market in the third quarter, which will in turn affect prices to fall by 0~5% in the third quarter.

The price of some graphics cards has been lower than the retail price

Since December last year, the price of GPU has been falling. According to foreign media reports, in early May this year, the prices of AMD’s Radeon RX6000 and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX30 (both are gaming graphics cards), compared to the recommended retail price, have dropped from 80% higher at the beginning of this year to Below 20%.

In addition, according to technology media Tom's Hardware, the average price of graphics cards dropped another 15% month-on-month in May. Currently, more than half of AMD and Nvidia's graphics cards are sold at or below the recommended retail price. The report states that this is much better than seeing double or triple the MSRP last year, or seeing all graphics cards selling for less than the MSRP in the coming months.

In mainland China, according to a report by CCTV Finance's "Zhengdian Finance" on April 8, the prices of graphics cards on the market have also plummeted. In Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen, known as the "No. 1 Electronics Street in China", some merchants said that graphics cards of various brands Prices have fallen sharply, with prices at the lowest level in the past two years. Individual prices have dropped by about 1,000 yuan in the past month.

According to an investigation report by a CCTV financial reporter, many speculators stocked up goods at high prices in the early stage, planned to increase the price and then resold them to the market. As a result, they were left with a large amount of inventory, and were forced to cut prices in the end, resulting in heavy losses. In the future, as the demand for graphics cards on the market decreases and the supply increases, there is still room for decline in graphics card prices.

The average price of consumer-grade MLCC is likely to drop by another 3~6%

According to an institutional survey, the significant decline in demand for end consumer products has further caused the demand for consumer-grade MLCC to decline, and market inventory continues to rise. At present, the average inventory level of each size has reached more than 90 days. It is expected that It is estimated that the price of consumer-grade MLCC may drop by another 3-6% on average in the second half of the year. In terms of

prices, from the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of 2022, the annual price of consumer-grade MLCC dropped by an average of 5~10%. In the second quarter of this year, in order to stimulate customers to increase their willingness to purchase goods, it was lowered again by 3~ 5%, and the price of some low-end consumer MLCCs has even touched the material cost.

Conclusion

As terminal demand slows down, the prices of some chips fall, and the "core shortage" trend is gradually coming to an end. What will be the future chip production capacity?

TrendForce said that from the second half of 2022 to 2023, high inflationary pressure may cause global consumer demand to continue to face downward revisions. However, from the supply side, the wafer foundry expansion process is affected by equipment delivery delays and factory construction. Due to project delays and other factors, the annual growth rate of global foundry production capacity has converged to 8% in 2023.

The agency believes that under the current market conditions of weak consumer demand, the delay in the production expansion process has eliminated some concerns about oversupply in 2023, but the shortage of some materials and parts that are still in tight supply may be prolonged again. It is necessary to rely on the diversified layout of various end applications and various product processes by wafer foundries to balance the uneven distribution of long and short material resources.

At present, the price and demand for different chips are increasingly differentiated in the market. Faced with the continued consumption downturn, manufacturers may quickly adjust their strategies, strengthen investment in innovation, improve product layout, and adapt resources to market demand. Enhance its own competitiveness and open up new development space.

Editor: Elaine