The leading American analog chip company has recently reported that chip prices have plummeted by 90% and is facing inventory clearance problems. Qualcomm has been surpassed by MediaTek for two consecutive years. Recall that more than a year ago, American chips were snapped up by all parties. In order to ensure the chip It can be said that times have changed and the world has changed. What makes American chips even more uncomfortable is that Chinese chips continue to make breakthroughs, reducing the demand for American chips.
The United States’ actions against Huawei in 2019 triggered a global chip buying boom. In order to ensure the supply of chips, not only Chinese companies had no choice but to hoard chips, but also European and Japanese companies were hoarding chips, causing the global chip supply to be tight. By 2020 Chip prices began to soar at the end of the year, and in 2021 chip prices even surged a hundred times.
During that time, American chips lived a happy life. The profits of many American chip companies soared. After all, American chips accounted for nearly 50% of the global chip market. American chips benefited the most from the skyrocketing chip prices. However, the United States The chip industry did not expect that this artificially caused tight supply of chips would not last long. The rising prices of
chips have put brand companies under tremendous pressure. Brand companies have to increase the selling prices of their products. In addition, the impact of the public health incident in the past two years has led to a decline in people's incomes, including cars, mobile phones, TVs, etc. Products began to decline sharply in the first half of this year, and demand for chips dropped rapidly.
At this time, it is the turn of American chip companies to bear the pressure. The first to feel the pressure are American radio frequency chip companies Skyworks, Qorvo, etc. Recently, it has been the turn of the world's largest analog chip companies. Among them, the boss of the American analog chip company is under the greatest pressure. Due to the surge in inventories, chip prices have been forced to drop significantly, with some chip prices experiencing the largest declines even falling by 90%.
What has caused the surge in U.S. chip inventories is also the breakthrough of Chinese chips. In the past two years, China's chip production capacity has surged, and breakthroughs have been made in storage, radio frequency, mobile phone chips , etc. The breakthrough of Chinese chips has increased the self-sufficiency rate. , the chip self-sufficiency rate in 2021 is estimated to reach 36% (calculated by output), and chip imports have dropped significantly by 24 billion in the first four months of this year.
In fact, more than 70% of the chips required for manufacturing in China can be produced using the 14nm and mature processes that have been put into production in mainland China. Currently, China has three major new foundries among the top ten in the world, namely SMIC and Shanghai Hua. Hong and Jinghe Integration highlight that domestic chips are relying heavily on domestic chip foundries for production, which continues to increase the self-sufficiency rate of domestic chips.
China is the world's largest manufacturing country. The amount of chips purchased by China in 2021 reached more than 400 billion US dollars, accounting for more than 60% of the global chip market. The sharp increase in China's chip self-sufficiency rate has reduced the number of imported chips from the United States. Coupled with the current global Many industries have experienced recession, and the combined impact has led to high chip inventories and plummeting prices in the United States.
China's chip production capacity expansion is still continuing. China's two major memory chip companies are currently advancing the second phase of the project. It is expected that after the second phase of the project is put into production, China's memory chip production capacity will triple, and other types of chips are also accelerating. Research and development, among which 5G radio frequency chips that have attracted attention because Huawei P50 Pro lacks American 5G radio frequency chips and cannot support 5G are also expanding rapidly. In 2021, the radio frequency chips produced in China accounted for 10% of the global market share. It can be expected that China will start from the United States in the future. Imported chips will further decline.
Not only is China accelerating the expansion of chip production capacity, but economies such as Europe and Japan are also investing in chips. They have all discovered the importance of enhancing chip self-sufficiency from the past two years, which has had a profound impact on American chips.
We can see that the measures taken by the United States since 2019 have created a short-term prosperity for the U.S. chip industry, but they have promoted the efforts of various economies around the world to develop the chip industry, and ultimately damaged the long-term interests of the U.S. chip industry. This is precisely The so-called United States is shooting itself in the foot!
