The NAND Flash industry benefitted from strong demand for PCs and servers in 2Q20 as the COVID-19 pandemic caused a demand surge for cloud services and technologies that are related to working from home, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. This, in turn, kept demand high for SSDs. However, the smartphone and consumer electronics markets had not recovered from the impact of the pandemic. The demand for these products therefore declined compared to the previous quarter. In 2Q20, total NAND Flash bit shipment and ASP both experienced a minor increase of about 3% QoQ, while NAND Flash revenue reached US$14.5 billion, a 6.5% increase QoQ.
The massive drop-off in DRAM quotes in 2019 culminated in a total yearly decline of more than 50%, which led to revenue losses for most module makers in 2019, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. However, Kingston’s growth against the downtrend served as the saving grace for the module industry, which registered yearly revenue of US$16.1 billion in 2019, a mere 3% decrease YoY.
The COVID-19 pandemic has compelled governments worldwide to impose border closures and regional lockdowns, which led to significant declines in various countries’ GDPs this year. As economic and social activities around the world have stagnated, the performance of the smartphone industry was severely damaged in 2Q20. According to TrendForce’s latest investigations, total smartphone production reached 286 million units in 2Q20, a slight QoQ rebound of 2.2%, but a 16.7% decrease YoY, which is the largest quarterly YoY drop in history.
Downstream foundry clients are currently exhibiting strong demand due to upcoming year-end shopping festivities in Europe and North America and the National Day long weekend and Singles’ Day sales promotions in China, according to TrendForce’s latest investigations. The strong momentum from downstream clients has in turn brought about a stable growth in foundries’ capacities and wafer input orders, with total foundry revenue projected to growth by 14% YoY in 3Q20.
On August 17, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced the latest revisions to its Entity List, which now includes 38 additional Huawei subsidiaries. Suppliers are prohibited from providing semiconductor products and components manufactured with U.S. equipment and software to Huawei and its subsidiaries. TrendForce provides the following analyses on the impacts that the expanded sanctions against Huawei have on five tech industries, including semiconductors, memory products, smartphones, display panels, and 5G communications.