TrendForce today (Oct. 16) held its Annual Forecast 2021 event at the NTUH International Convention Center. Key summaries of the event can be found here.
The memory market (including DRAM and NAND Flash) is still in a state of oversupply in 4Q20, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. In light of recent U.S. sanctions against Huawei, other smartphone brands have been actively stocking up on memory products in an effort to capture Huawei’s lost market shares, but this procurement momentum is insufficient to improve the lethargic state of the memory market. In addition, as memory demand from the server industry has yet to make a noticeable recovery, overall memory ASP is expected to remain weak in 4Q20 and decrease by about 10% QoQ.
In this release, TrendForce provides its forecast of 10 key trends in the tech industry for 2021.
On October 4, 2020, SMIC made formal announcements assessing the Commerce Department’s notification to SMIC's suppliers that they will be restricted from shipping certain U.S.-originated equipment, components, and raw materials to the Chinese foundry, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. U.S.-based semiconductor equipment suppliers, including Applied Materials, Lam Research, and KLA, are expected to bear the brunt of the impact from the latest sanction against SMIC, while Netherlands-based ASML will be affected as well, since its machines contain U.S.-originated key components. By contrast, TrendForce’s preliminary analysis indicates that the export restrictions will likely have less of an impact on suppliers of silicon wafers and other raw chemical materials for semiconductors, since these suppliers are mostly Japanese and European companies.
Due to server ODMs’ higher-than-expected inventory of server barebones in 3Q20, additional server orders from the ODMs’ clients came to a screeching halt, therefore resulting in a QoQ decrease in overall server orders for the quarter, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. As ODMs gradually destock their inventories of server barebones in 4Q20, data center operators are expected to step up their server procurement activities as well, albeit to a far lesser extent than 2Q20. However, given the excess inventory of server barebones, one to two quarters are needed to correct this situation, meaning ODMs will be unlikely to restart their procurement of server DRAM and server components until late 2020 or early 2021. In light of the fact that server manufacturers still hold a relatively high inventory of server DRAM, TrendForce is now forecasting a 13-18% QoQ decline in server DRAM prices for 4Q20.