Recently, Guangzhou announced that the number of analog chips produced in the first five months of this year increased by 43%. This is reminiscent of the earlier time when leading American analog chip companies were forced to cut prices by up to nearly 90%. The current situation of American chips can be described as shooting themselves in the face. feet.
analog chip is a bridge connecting the physical real world and the digital world. Analog chips convert a lot of information in the real world into digital signals so that computers can process these data. With the advent of the intelligent era, analog chips are becoming more and more widely used. has also become more important.
The design and manufacturing of analog chips are very different from digital chips. Digital chips can be designed by standardized software and produced by standard processes; analog chips need to rely on the rich experience of engineers for development and must also be produced using specialized processes. Therefore, analog chips Chip companies all have their own chip manufacturing plants.
It is precisely because the development of analog chips is too difficult that although Chinese chips have made great achievements, they are mainly in digital chips, while analog chips lag far behind, far behind the progress of digital chips.
The United States is precisely the leader in analog chips. Among the top ten analog chip companies in the world, six are American chip companies. Among them, Texas Instruments , ADI, and Skyworks in the United States are the top three analog chip companies in the world. With a market share of nearly 40%, the United States has a huge advantage in analog chips.
However, when China has been vigorously developing chips in recent years, it has also recognized its shortcomings in analog chips and actively supports the development of the analog chip industry. According to statistics, China's analog chip self-sufficiency rate was only 6% in 2017, but by 2020 It has increased to 12% in 2016 and doubled in 3 years, which shows the fierce growth.
The analog chip development data released by Guangzhou shows that China's analog chips continued to maintain a rapid growth momentum in the first five months of this year, and the self-sufficiency rate of domestic analog chips has further increased. This is undoubtedly a huge pressure for the leader of analog chips - American chips. .
Changes in supply and demand in the global chip market are another pressure faced by the U.S. chip industry. In 2020 and 2021, global companies have been hoarding chips to ensure the security of chip supply, and speculators' speculation has intensified the tight chip supply situation; however, Since the beginning of this year, sales of cars and mobile phones have declined significantly, and chip demand has declined. At this time, speculators' selling has only exacerbated the problem of oversupply of chips, and chip prices have begun to fall.
China is the largest buyer in the global chip market, accounting for up to 60% of the global chip market demand. The increase in China's analog chip self-sufficiency rate will undoubtedly put the final straw on the current oversupply of the analog chip market, so I saw a certain U.S. analog chip companies have aggressively cut prices by nearly 90% in order to sell products.
In fact, it is the United States that has caused chaos in global chip supply and demand. In 2019, the United States took measures against Huawei , which caused a rapid imbalance in the chip market that was balanced in supply and demand at the time, prompting various economies to urgently purchase chips, and at the same time massively expanded chip production capacity to enhance supply chain security. In the past three years, these chip production capacities have been gradually released, and the current decline in chip demand has led to the continued decline of the chip market. It can be said that the United States' practices have led to today's results.
However, the strategy of China and Europe, the two major economies, to continue to increase their chip self-sufficiency rate will not change. The pace of chip production capacity expansion is likely to continue, and U.S. chips may face a more difficult situation in the future.
