Electronics

The latest survey and research found that the time from placing an order to waiting for the arrival of the chips for companies that buy chips has stretched to more than 20 weeks, indicating that the global chip shortage problem continues to worsen.

According to a research report by Susquehanna Financial Group, in July, the "lead time" for purchasing semiconductors from placing an order to obtaining delivery has been stretched to 20.2 weeks, an increase of more than 8 days from the previous month. This is the longest waiting time since the company started tracking relevant data in 2017.

The report shows that the shortage of microcontrollers intensified in July, and the waiting time for delivery reached 26.5 weeks, which is much higher than the usual 6 to 9 weeks. This type of chip is also a logic chip used for control functions of automobiles, industrial equipment, and home electronics. However, the good news is that the lead time of power management chips has been shortened.

The automotive industry is experiencing the deepest impact from the semiconductor shortage. Due to the inability to produce smoothly, it is expected to lose more than US$100 billion in auto sales. Other areas are also affected. Many electronic product manufacturers, including the largest companies such as Apple, cannot meet all the needs of their products.

Investors will pay attention to the waiting time of semiconductor delivery, looking for clues about the excessive ordering and inventory accumulation of semiconductor customers, because these are usually the precursors of declining demand. However, the chip industry executives are cautiously reluctant to make such assumptions this time, believing that customers are more willing to make long-term supply commitments now than in the past.

Digitimes: Wi-Fi chip quotations soared nearly 5 times, customers only scan the goods, regardless of the price

The major US-based network IC manufacturers have once again extended the chip lead time from the original nearly 50 weeks and then later. This action has not only made Taiwanese network operators skip their feet, but also Taiwanese industrial computer customers that have always been operating stably have begun to be affected.

Taiwan-based network chip suppliers stated that, in fact, the tight demand for terminal Wi-Fi, switches and Ethernet chips has been going on for a long time, but when everyone is out of stock, it has helped to increase downstream customers’ demand. Hoarding momentum.

In terms of the previous Taiwanese industrial computer’s demand for thousands of network chips a month, most customers are currently grabbing production capacity directly with orders for several thousand per month. The terminal demand continues to rise, and IC distributors must increase prices. Under sales, the Taiwanese network chip supplier bluntly stated that in terms of the terminal Wi-Fi module's selling price of about 3.5 US dollars in 2020, the current transaction price in the third quarter has been directly called 5 times and the supply is in short supply. It can be seen that the terminal network chip The gap in the market is huge.

MediaTek's network chip division, Realtek, Lianjie, AsiaInfo and Jiuyang have all expressed good news that their own network chip product line shipments are expected to continue to grow in the third quarter, and chip quotations are still a common phenomenon that tends to rise but not fall. The third quarter revenue and profit figures of Taiwanese network chip design companies are expected to hit a record high. Most of them have been optimistically expected by the market, and it is believed that the fourth quarter performance will continue to advance.

Even the 2022 order visibility of relevant supply chain companies has already been fully loaded, which allows various Taiwanese network chip companies to set higher and higher targets for the company's revenue and profit growth in the future.

Downstream IC distributors also said that the current Wi-Fi, switch and Ethernet chip quotations are continuing to rise. Although most suppliers are currently out of stock, the clients still continue to increase their prices. Purchasing some stocks for reserve, there are obvious signs that there is no market, and it also forces the price of network chips to continue to rise infinitely.

Taking Wi-Fi modules that can be used universally in terminal PCs, industrial computers, and consumer electronic products as an example, the price in 2020 is still at a high level around US$3.5, but the price of one set in the third quarter has been speculated to 16— —The unprecedented grand occasion of $17, but the customer didn't care at all and wanted more goods.

This situation originally made people wary about whether the client had obvious repeated orders. It is the customers who want it, and the attitude is that the high price is also required, so that the entire upstream chip factory and midstream channel industry can only find a way to deliver the goods as soon as possible.

Taiwanese IC distributors said that the current distribution of network chips really feels the demand of downstream customers. Usually, after the original factory gives the goods, the company will increase the price and resell it, and start to inquire about customer acceptance. If customers think it is expensive, wait and see Immediately, the goods will be divided by other customers, and the price is not discussed at all, only whether the goods are available or not. This kind of demand enthusiasm makes it difficult to rationally discuss any question of whether the demand is true or not.

While customers are scrambling for goods without pricing, the operating growth momentum of the Taiwanese network chip factory in the second half of 2021 has not seen any signs of weakening. On the contrary, it may continue to accelerate upward. In addition, the terminal chip quotation is ready to move again. The third quarter is very It is possible to see the average gross profit margin of Taiwan-based network chip suppliers approaching 50% in an all-round way, and may even easily fly past the 50% mark.

Car chips are estimated to be tight until 2023. Is "this variable" likely to worsen the chip shortage?

Beginning in the fourth quarter of last year, global automakers have experienced a shortage of automotive chips. The United States, Japan, and Germany have even sent people to negotiate with the government, hoping that wafer foundries including TSMC can accelerate production. Now in the second half of the year, has the chip shortage alleviated? I am afraid that it is not so optimistic. The investment bank Goldman Sachs issued a report and judged that although the tight supply situation will improve slightly from September, until next year, the new car inventory of various car manufacturers will still be far below the level before the outbreak. Taiwanese experts said that the sales of electric vehicles this year are expected to grow two to three times that of last year, and the demand for sensing components is greater. Therefore, the tight supply of automotive chips will not improve until at least the first half of next year.

The best-selling pure electric vehicles in Europe and the United States were officially introduced to Taiwan. Hyundai Motor, the world's fourth-largest car manufacturer, said that 2021 is the first year of electric vehicles. In the future, at least one new car will be launched every year. With the goal of 2025, the brand of new energy vehicles will squeeze into the top three in the world.

Salesperson: "Its energy consumption shows the upper limit of its charge and when to charge it, it can be set to a custom setting."

Smart power monitoring panel, you can see the remaining power, five-seater pure electric travel, full-charged maximum endurance of 482 kilometers, advertised high CP value, to be distinguished from luxury cars, these smart dashboards, multimedia Information and power system functions are indispensable for microcontroller MCUs. Has the tight supply of automotive chips that global car manufacturers worry about has been alleviated?

Zhan Xingsheng, deputy general manager of Nanyang Industrial: "The automotive market will probably be short of chips for a while, and it may not be possible until the second quarter of next year. But I think as Europe and the United States recover, everyone is stepping up efforts. Then we are here. On the other hand, the Taiwan part has also made sufficient preparations. At present, the Taiwan part has no doubts about chips."

Europe and the United States will gradually ban the sale of fuel vehicles, and the demand for electric vehicles has shown explosive growth. However, each electric vehicle requires several times more automotive chips than traditional fuel vehicles. Even if the delivery cycle is shortened in the second half of this year, the supply of chips is still unable to keep up with the pace of production. .

Zheng Kaian, a senior analyst at the Institute of Industrial Information of the Council of Information Technology: "The (chips) of the basic car may be enough, but today if the car has some special self-driving functions, or a special audio-visual display function, then this is originally , It may be that it has some special functions in the premium car, it has this kind of service function of market segmentation, then these functions may not be available, or it may have to wait for a while before it can help customers install it again ."

Since the beginning of this year, Toyota, Kia, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW have successively released electric vehicle models. However, the shortage of chips has brought uncertainty, and the speed of the transition to electric vehicles may be dragged down.

Chen Yiguang, Chairman of First Financial Investment Consulting, said: "Car chips come in again, and an order that squeezes into this part of it will be crowded out to the original consumer electronics and PC mobile phone chips, so it will lead to the so-called length. It is expected (unable to ship smoothly), TSMC, UMC, and the world advanced their legal talks. In fact, they all mentioned the current situation. There should be no way to alleviate the shortage until the first half of next year. So it looks like the overall situation. The order is still the situation of chasing production capacity.”

In order to wait for the out-of-stock parts to be unable to ship, it is difficult to alleviate it for a while, and large factories at home and abroad have expanded their factories to seize business opportunities.

In March of this year, Power Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. invested 278 billion to build a 12-inch wafer fab, and then UMC launched the expansion plan of Nanke. In addition, TSMC, the world’s advanced and domestic SMIC have also followed suit. Experts agreed that the expansion of the plant will be officially put into production. It will take time, and there may be no solution to the chip shortage in the short term.

Chen Yiguang, Chairman of First Financial Investment Consulting: "In the past two years, there will be 29, and 29 new foundries will come out. Generally speaking, it will take two years to build, so starting from this year, we will calculate 2021 and 2022. , 2023, equal to this part of the entire wafer in 2023, the supply part will slowly ease."

The dawn of chip shortages is revealed, and because the Delta variant virus has caused the global epidemic to re-emerge, the supply of automotive chips in the future will inevitably add more variables.