According to Taiwan media reports, in the mobile phone PC supply chain continues to be weak, in recent days, apple, AMD cut orders, NVIDIA delayed new products, Micron production news. At the same time, some of the microcontrollers (MCUS) that were in short supply and relatively rigid price began to fall in price, especially the consumer MCUS mainly targeted by Taiwan MCU manufacturers. Presage semiconductor industry downward pressure intensifies.
TSMC suffered orders from three major customers
Amid rising global inflation and weak demand for consumer electronics such as mobile phones and PCS, semiconductor makers said:
TSMC was revised by three major customers. First, the shipment target of Apple's new iPhone (iPhone 14 series) was slashed by 10%. In addition, due to high PC inventory, AMD cut 7nm and 6nm process orders of about 20,000 pieces, the time point falls in the fourth quarter to the first quarter of next year; NVIDIA was due to launch TSMC's new 5nm product in September, but will delay shipments for a quarter as the mining boom slows down.
TSMC is accelerating its search for alternatives to fill capacity and minimize the impact, the report said.
Markets generally pessimistic thought, in the second half of the market will continue to deteriorate, go to inventory, cut down a single linkage effect will break through upstream confidence, semiconductor wafer foundry capacity with pomp since season 3, in addition to TSMC process and capacity advantages, is not affected by the collapse in demand, and 22/28 nano mainstream process is still hot, Capacity of other mature processes has been loosened.
Micron, a major maker of MEMORY chips for PCS and smartphones, warned on Tuesday that it expects global smartphone sales to fall by around 5% in 2022 from last year, and PC sales to fall by up to 10%, as a result of significantly weaker consumer demand.
The storm of cutting orders and new product delay in the semiconductor industry continues to expand, and even TSMC, the leader of wafer foundry, has been hit, which also brings more uncertainties to the subsequent semiconductor market.
MCU quotes avalanche
Cut down a single semiconductor chip depreciate storm expand, previous price relatively strong, the demand of micro controller (MCU) started to offer an avalanche, especially in the Taiwan factory lock price pressures, the largest consumer application mainland market more coming from the global top five MCU factory prices halved, new tang, holtek, loose the enterprise such as John afternoon under pressure.
MCU became the driver IC, part of the power management IC and CIS image sensor conditions reverse after another key chip face pressure to cut list prices, according to the semiconductor market in short supply pomp fever quickly, originally crazy short chips on the client side after repeat order, recently by the inflation pressure, war, such as raising interest rates lead to demand than expected, Began to slash inventory, price clearance.
Supply chain revealed that the server, automotive and industrial MCU market continues to be strong, the price of high-order products is still relatively stiff, however, Taiwan MCU factory is mainly based on consumer product applications, escape this wave of inventory adjustment caused by cutting orders and price correction pressure.
Who will make up for the loss of consumer electronics
It is clear that some semiconductor supply chains have been hit by the fierce consumer electronics cuts. But for the semiconductor industry as a whole, can the loss of output value caused by declining orders for mobile phones, PCS and so on be made up?
In terms of the current semiconductor supply situation, the shipments of mobile phones and PCS declined, and the orders of related semiconductor fields also decreased. However, in the whole semiconductor application field, there are some areas that still have strong demand for semiconductors, such as electric vehicles. According to TrendForce, sales of new energy vehicles (ev, plug-in hybrid and fuel cell) totaled 2.04 million units in the first quarter of 2022, up 80 percent year on year. Among them, pure electric vehicle (BEV) showed the strongest growth, with 1.508 million units sold. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) totaled 493,000.
The new force automobile drives the shipment demand of semiconductor products such as sensors, power semiconductor and MCU, and the capacity of automobile chip is still far from meeting the requirements according to the current latest market situation. Output from these products is expected to rise, making up for some of the semiconductor orders lost. In addition, some of the spare capacity can also be allocated to small and medium-sized enterprises, which previously have limited capacity, to meet the needs of different types of chips but the same process.
However, it remains to be seen how the proportion of lost orders and new orders in the semiconductor industry chain will be.