Global market intelligence firm TrendForce states that Chinese memory manufacturer YMTC is now at risk of exiting the market for 3D NAND Flash products by 2024 following its formal placement on the Entity List of the US Commerce Department on December 15. From this point forward, the Commerce Department will be reviewing and approving individual transactions related to the exportation, re-exportation, and sales of equipment, technologies, and other related goods from the US to YMTC. With acquisitions of equipment parts and technical support from its US partners becoming very difficult and prolonged, YMTC is going to be severely constrained from raising its bit output. Hence, its foothold on the market for 3D NAND Flash products is expected to weaken as time goes by.
Global market intelligence firm TrendForce reports that the revenue generation momentum of the global IC design industry slowed down in 3Q22. The main factors behind this development were the Russia-Ukraine military conflict, the recent COVID-19 lockdowns in China, the ongoing inflation, and clients undergoing inventory corrections. The total revenue of the global top 10 IC design houses came to US$37.38 billion for 3Q22, showing a QoQ decline of 5.3%. Qualcomm remained first place in the ranking of the global top 10 IC design houses by revenue for 3Q22. Broadcom returned to second place by overtaking NVIDIA and AMD, who slipped to third and fourth respectively due to weakening demand for PCs and cryptocurrency mining machines.
Geopolitical tensions have been rising as the US-China trade dispute escalates, and the global server supply chain has undergone notable changes as a result. With regard to L6 server motherboard production, the first notable wave of relocation since the start of the trade dispute in 2018 involved server ODMs moving their production lines from Mainland China to Taiwan. Then, due to the construction of data centers across the Asia-Pacific region and ODMs’ need to increase their STM lines, Southeast Asian countries such as Malaysia and Thailand also came under consideration for capacity expansion. More recently, the trade dispute has taken another significant turn with the US Commerce Department further broadening the semiconductor technology export rules. In view of this development, some US-based cloud service providers (CSPs) have been conducting more internal discussions about adding server production lines outside Taiwan as a precautionary measure. Hence, from a longer-term perspective, TrendForce believes the core parts of the server supply chain will eventually shift to Southeast Asia and the Americas.
According to TrendForce’s research, the total revenue of the global top 10 foundries rose by 6% QoQ to US$35.21 billion for 3Q22 as the release of the new iPhone series during the second half of the year generated significant stock-up activities across Apple’s supply chain.
According to TrendForce’s latest research, global smartphone production totaled around 289 million units for 3Q22, showing a slight QoQ drop of 0.9% and a YoY drop of 11%.