Electrical Equipment / Components & Telecoms

The data released by the American Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) recently showed that the global chip sales in 2022 reached a record $573.5 billion, up 3.2% year on year. From the perspective of chip types, the sales of analog chips increased the most, with a year-on-year increase of 7.5%, reaching $89 billion. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation reported.

According to Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, the market size will account for 37.5% of the analog chip market share in 2022. It is reported that analog chips do not rely on advanced manufacturing processes, have a long product life cycle, small price fluctuations, high requirements for stability and cost, and are relatively less affected by the semiconductor industry restrictions of overseas countries. It is a long slope and thick snow track.

According to WSTS forecast data, it is expected that the analog chip market will continue to grow against the trend in 2023, and the global market sales are expected to increase by 1.56% to reach 90.952 billion dollars, while the global integrated circuit sales are expected to decrease by 5.61% to 453.041 billion dollars in the same period.

According to the observation report of Huacheng Import and Export Data, the market size of China's analog chip industry will be about 273.1 billion yuan in 2021, accounting for about 70%. China is the most important consumer market in the world, and the growth rate is higher than the overall growth rate of the global analog chip market. It is expected that the scale of China's analog chip market will increase to 334 billion yuan in 2025, and the compound growth rate from 2020 to 2025 will be 6%.

In terms of industry structure, according to Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, Texas Instruments is the leader of the global analog chip industry, with a global market share of 19% in 2021, and its leading position is relatively stable. Other leading analog chip manufacturers in the world include Adeno, Scarlett, Infineon, Italy and France Semiconductor, etc. The total market share of the top five manufacturers in the world is 51.5%, and the competition pattern is relatively scattered.

Although China is the world's largest analog chip application market, due to the late start of the domestic semiconductor industry, the domestic analog chip market is still monopolized by international giants, and overseas manufacturers account for more than 80% of the market share, and the localization rate is still at a low level. According to the data of the China Semiconductor Industry Association, the self-sufficiency rate of domestic analog chips in 2020 is only 12%, and there is a vast space for domestic substitution.

According to the data, from the perspective of the layout of domestic manufacturers, in recent years, with the increase of policy and downstream manufacturers' support for the import substitution of domestic chips, the gap between local analog chip enterprises and the world's advanced manufacturers' technological level has gradually narrowed, and some domestic high-end analog chip gaps have to be filled. A number of excellent analog chip enterprises have emerged, such as Sunbond, Thrip, Aiwei Electronics, Nanochip, SimponMicro, Powerchip Shanghai Beiling, etc., Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

Crucially, analog chips are applied to almost all automotive electronic components. In addition to traditional automotive electronics such as vehicle entertainment, instrument panel, body electronics, LED power management and other fields, they are also widely used in the power system of new energy vehicles, intelligent cockpit systems and auto drive system systems of intelligent vehicles. In 2022, the scale of the global automotive dedicated analog chip market will increase by 17% to $13.8 billion, making it the fastest growing downstream market for analog chips.

To this end, domestic analog chip companies have also entered the automotive field which is valued by international giants. For example, the proportion of revenue of nano-core micro-vehicles increased to 22% in the third quarter, and the revenue contributed by the automotive sector is expected to continue to increase with the successive launch of corresponding vehicle-level products. In addition, the latest report shows that the major analog chip companies in China, such as Simbond, Thrip, Aiwei Electronics, Javert and Xidi Micro, are also expanding into the automotive field.

On the macro level, China Merchants Securities recently reported that the semiconductor industry has improved marginally, and the inventory of the semiconductor industry chain is expected to be reduced by 2023. It is recommended to continue to pay attention to the marginal changes in demand and inventory, wait for the inflection point of the industry boom, and grasp the timing of the early layout of the sector investment. In addition, UBS, CITIC Securities, Haitong Securities, etc. have all released relevant research reports that are optimistic about semiconductor in 2023.