According to WitsView, a division of TrendForce, the market has witnessed stronger demand for full-screen smartphones while higher screen-to-body ratio has become a major trend of this year. In order to make bezels narrower, drive ICs for mid- and high-end phones have been switching from solutions based on Chip-on-Glass (COG) packaging to those on Chip-on-Film (COF) packaging. With major smartphone vendors actively adopting COF solutions, the percentage of models using COF packaging would account for 35% of the global smartphone market in 2019, a significant increase from 16.5% in 2018.
TrendForce has published a new report profiling the latest trends in the global smart speaker market. According to data in the report, the global shipments of smart speakers are expected to reach 62.25 million units in 2018. Driven by the expansion of Google Home into more regions and the growth of smart speaker market in China, the shipments would increase further by 53% YoY, reaching 95.25 million units in 2019. With the strongest growth momentum among all categories of consumer electronics, smart speakers have emerged as a major application of voice interactions and are fast becoming the gateway to other smart-home products as well as the vast ecosystems. Companies including Apple, Facebook, Baidu, and Tencent have all entered the market this year, in addition to first movers.
The NAND Flash market has remained in oversupply for the whole year of 2018, according to DRAMeXchange, a research division of TrendForce, with sufficient inventories for notebook/smartphone OEMs. The China-US trade war and the shortage of Intel CPU have made situations worse on the supply side. In October, the contract prices of SSD, and eMMC/UFS witnessed continued fall, while the price drop of NAND Flash chips and wafers appeared to be larger.
Contract prices of PC DRAM products have started to turn downward sharply this October as major suppliers have completed most contract negotiations, reports DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce. The average price of 4GB PC DRAM modules for 4Q18 contracts has dropped by 10.14% QoQ from US$34.5 in 3Q18 to the current US$31. As for the average contract price of 8GB PC DRAM modules, it has dropped by 10.29% QoQ from US$68 in 3Q18 to the current US$61. Since the DRAM market has just entered oversupply, DRAMeXchange does not discount the possibility of further price declines in November and December. Also, the price decline of 8GB solutions will continue to surpass that of 4GB solutions because DRAM suppliers are now eager to sell off their inventory.
According to the latest report - New Display Technology Cost Analysis - by WitsView, a division of TrendForce, Mini LED technology has made constant process over the past year, with a significant increase in production output (in unit per hour, UPH) and die bond accuracy. Looking ahead to 2019, WitsView expects a high possibility of the mass production of products with Mini LED backlighting. The processing costs of display units may increase by 20%~100% depending on the number of Mini LED used.