The disruption of the chip supply chain caused by the pandemic in the past two years, as well as geopolitical flashpoints such as Sino-US trade frictions and the Russia-Ukraine war, have led regional economies worldwide to focus more on the autonomy of local production and supply chains. According to TrendForce research, in terms of 12-inch equivalent production capacity in various regions around the world, Taiwan will account for approximately 43% of capacity by 2025, followed by China at 27%, the United States at 8%, and South Korea at 12%. In terms of advanced process capacity below 7nm (inclusive), Taiwan will account for approximately 69% by 2025, South Korea 18%, the United States 12%, and China 1%. Compared with the landscape in 2022, it is obvious that the United States will increase its proportion of advanced process production capacity in the next three years, while China will focus on mature processes.
According to TrendForce, market oversupply intensified in 2Q22 due to lagging demand and continued NAND Flash output and process advancement. The market consensus is a disappointing 2H22 peak season for consumer electronics including notebooks, TVs, and smartphones. Material inventory levels continue to rise and has become a risk to the supply chain. Due to slow destocking among distributors and a conservative stocking approach among clients, inventory problems have bubbled over upstream onto the supply side and sellers are under increased pressure to sell. TrendForce estimates, due to the rapid deterioration of the balance between supply and demand, the drop in NAND Flash pricing will expand to 8~13% in 3Q22, and this decline may continue into 4Q22.
In order to further improve the power performance of electric vehicles (EV), major global automakers have focused on a new generation of SiC (silicon carbide) power components and have successively launched a number of high-performance car models equipped with corresponding products. According to TrendForce research, as more and more automakers begin to introduce SiC technology into electric drive systems, the market for vehicle SiC power components is forecast to reach US$1.07 billion in 2022 and will climb to US$3.94 billion by 2026.
Micron's Japanese plant at Hiroshima suffered a power outage on July 8. According to TrendForce investigations, this plant's monthly wafer starts accounts for approximately 30% of Micron's total monthly wafer starts in 3Q22. In terms of global wafers starts, this plant’s proportion of wafer starts is approximately 7%. The plant’s primary production process is 1Z nm, accounting for more than 50% of capacity, followed by 1Y nm, accounting for nearly 35%. Although machinery initiated the uninterruptible power supply system when the outage occurred, due to the voltage drop, plant machinery required initialization and inspection. The power outage persisted for approximately 5~10 minutes and the effect on production capacity was limited.
According to TrendForce investigations, foundries have seen a wave of order cancellations with the first of these revisions originating from large-size Driver IC and TDDI, which rely on mainstream 0.1Xμm and 55nm processes, respectively. Although products such as MCU and PMIC were previously in short supply, foundries’ capacity utilization rate remained roughly at full capacity through their adjustment of product mix. However, a recent wave cancellations have emerged for PMIC, CIS, and certain MCU and SoC orders. Although still dominated by consumer applications, foundries are beginning to feel the strain of the copious order cancellations from customers and capacity utilization rate has officially declined.
