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TrendForce posits that the wafer foundry market is expected to see a recovery in 2025, with an estimated annual growth of 20%—up from 16% in 2024. This positive outlook comes despite the weak end-market demand for consumer products, which has led component manufacturers to adopt a conservative stocking strategy and made the average capacity utilization rate of wafer foundries fall below 80% in 2024. Only advanced processes, such as 5/4/3nm nodes used for HPC products and flagship smartphones, have managed to maintain full capacity, and this situation is expected to persist into 2025. However, the visibility in the consumer end market remains low for 2025.
TrendForce's latest reports reveal that the second quarter of 2024 saw a significant increase in demand for enterprise SSDs due to the increased deployment of NVIDIA GPU platforms and rising storage needs driven by AI applications, along with a surge in demand from server brands. The surge in demand for high-capacity SSDs for AI applications—coupled with suppliers’ inability to adjust capacity in the first half of the year—resulted in a supply shortage that drove average enterprise SSD prices up by more than 25% QoQ. This price increase led to a revenue growth of over 50% for suppliers.
TrendForce reports that the market for battery metals such as nickel, cobalt, and lithium remained weak in August, with prices for these raw materials continuing to fall. Most notably, the price of lithium spodumene concentrate dropped sharply in August—seeing a 16% quarterly decline—while some lithium concentrate prices fell below US$800/ton.
TrendForce reports that NAND Flash prices continued to rise in 2Q24 as server inventory adjustments neared completion and AI spurred demand for high-capacity storage products. However, high inventory levels among PC and smartphone buyers led to a 1% QoQ decline in NAND Flash bit shipments. Despite this, ASP increased by 15% and drove total revenue to US$16.796 billion, a 14.2% growth compared to the previous quarter.
TrendForce reports that Apple's upcoming iPhone 16 series will be powered by the new A18 and A18 Pro processors and will feature a comprehensive DRAM upgrade to support Apple Intelligence. The excitement around Apple Intelligence has been building since WWDC24, and with a relatively low base in 2023, Apple’s four new models are expected to have a combined production volume of 86.7 million units in the second half of 2024, marking an 8% year-on-year increase. Looking at total production for 2024, Apple is currently close to Samsung, the market leader, and could potentially surpass Samsung by the end of the year to become the top smartphone manufacturer by market share for the first time.