According to WitsView, a division of TrendForce, the shipments of LCD monitor recorded a positive year-on-year growth of 0.3% in 1Q18. Over the whole quarter, the demand saw drop in January and February, before showing a significant quarterly rise of 40.9% in March.
According to the latest report of DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, the global server shipment experienced slight decline in 1Q18, but the demand for CPU, Server DRAM, and other related components remain flat. The demand for server will see obvious recovery in 2Q18, and global server shipment will grow by nearly 10% compared with 1Q18. For 1H18, Dell EMC, HPE, and Inspur will be the top three server suppliers with shipment market shares of 16.6%, 15%, and 7.2% respectively.
According to DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, China has entered the semiconductor sector and focused on the development of domestic memory industry. The three key players are YMTC, Innotron (Hefei Chang Xin) and JHICC, which work on NAND Flash, mobile DRAM and specialty DRAM respectively. All three companies have arranged trial production to begin in 2H18 and mass production to begin in 1H19. This will make 2019 the first year of China’s domestic memory chip production.
The mid-power 3030 LED package products in the Chinese market saw significant price drop in March 2018, and high-power ceramic-substrate LEDs saw slight price drop, while prices of other products remained stable, says LEDinside, a division of TrendForce.
According to the latest data from EnergyTrend, a division of TrendForce, cobalt prices continued to rise in 2018 and soared by more than 20% in the first quarter. The rise of raw material prices results from short-term capital speculation and high supplier concentration. This concentrated industry structure may continue to push up the prices in long term. The soaring costs of raw material will be reflected in prices of lithium batteries and new energy vehicles quarter by quarter. This is also a challenge for the battery industry, which has been figuring out ways to reduce the dependence on cobalt.