The Tech Week that was... 25~29 Apr

?Welcome to the latest edition of my weekly newsletter bringing you all the key semiconductor and technology news from around the world in one easy read.??

It is earnings season with many semiconductor companies reporting positive earnings results for Q1.

Samsung reported record revenue for q1'22 of US$61.2billion, up 19% yoy.?The memory division contributed around US$21billion due to strong demand from the server and PC market whilst its foundry business reported its highest ever revenues.

Intel reported revenue of US$18.4billion in Q1 down 7% year on year and down 10%?sequentially.?Looking forward Intel expects revenue to be slightly down around US$18billion.?

Qualcomm reported record revenues of US$11.2billion in fiscal Q2’22, the third consecutive quarter of record revenues, as the company’s diversification policy pays off with strong growth in automotive and IoT markets.?For the 3rd quarter they are forecasting midpoint revenues of US$10.9billion.

STM reported Q1 ?sales of US$3.55billion, up up 17.6% yoy due to strong demand for microcontrollers.?For Q2 they are forecasting revenue of around US$3.75billion?and for the the full year STM is forecasting revenue ~US16billion.?They say demand for capacity will exceed capacity for the rest of the year, with demand around 30~40% above capacity.

Renesas reported their Q1 result reporting revenue of US$2.7billion up 70% year on year.

Taiwan foundry UMC reported Q1 revenue of US$2.16billion, up 34.7% yoy as it struggled to meet total demand from its customers.?There was overall strong demand from automotive, industrial servers and networking segments which offset softness in smartphones, note books and personal computers.?It will spend US$3.6billion in capex in 2002 of which 90% will be for 300mm capacity.

Taiwan OSAT ASE reported net revenues for it’s ATM group of US$3.015billion for the first quarter of 2022, after divesting their China sites at the end of last year. The ATM group is still heavily loaded with utilization rates around 80~85% despite some customers reducing their forecasts but this was outpaced by other customers increasing their forecasts.?They see high-performance computing, networking and automotive sectors faring better whilst Andriod and consumer electronics markets are showing weakness.??For 2022 they are forecasting that they will grow by 2x the logic semiconductor industry growth rate.?Planned expenditure for 2022 remains unchanged at US$2billion.

In other industry news..

German automotive parts supplier Continental expects the chip supply shortage to continue in 2022 but does expect that these should ease in the 2nd half of the year, with significant improvement in supply in 2023. ?

Wolfspeed formally opened it’s new 200mm SiC Fab In Marcy New York this week. ?The fully automated facility is the world's first and largest 200mm Silicon Carbide Fab will support the growing electric vehicle (EV), 4G/5G mobile and industrial markets, creating more than 600 new jobs by 2029.

In market research news..

Global semiconductor revenue is forecast to grow 13.6% in 2022 to US$676billion according to Gartner.?Increasing semiconductor ASP’s will be a key driver for the growth.?The chip shortage will remain in 2022 but start to ease in 2nd half 2002.?The shortage will affect segments differently with automotive components remaining in shortage whilst the pressure on PC and smartphones components should ease.

?The top 10 semiconductor companies hold 57% of the global semiconductor market with 5 of these companies being fabless in 2021 according to IC Insights. The total market was worth US$614.6billion in 2021.?In 2008 only 1 of the top 10 companies was fabless and in 2000 none were.?In 2021 Samsung took top position from Intel and SK Hynix.

?The Global Fab wafer capacity is forecast to increase 8.7% in 2022 as 10 new Fabs enter production according to IC Insights.?Total wafer capacity in 2022 is forecast to be a record 263.6 million (200mm equivalents) with a utilization rate around 93%.?All the 10 new Fabs will be 300mm Fabs, with the biggest increase in capacity coming from new memory Fabs of SK Hynix and Winbond, as well as 3 new Fabs from TSMC (2 in Taiwan and 1?in China).

Worldwide semiconductor equipment billings increased 44% in 2021 to US$102billion as both front end and back semiconductor equipment saw strong demand due to capex spend to increase capacity to satisfy global chip demand according to SEMI.?The equipment market growth was driven by advanced logic and foundry capacity builds, DRAM investment recovery and robust spending in NAND Flash. Spending on equipment was strong for all regions in 2021, which also marked the first time the top three regions – China, Korea, and Taiwan – each registered over $20 billion in annual spending for capital equipment.

Smartphone shipments fell 11% to 314million units in Q1 2022, the 3rd consecutive quarter of year on year decline, according to Strategy Analytics.?“Factory constraints and component shortages continued to restrict smartphone supply in the first quarter of this year,” notes senior director Linda Sui. “Meanwhile, unfavourable economic conditions, geopolitical issues, as well as COVID-19 disruption (China rolling lockdown etc) continued to weaken consumers’ demand on smartphones and other non-essential products.”.?Samsung top the supplier list with 24% market share in Q1, Apple was 2nd with 18% share, with Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo making up the top 5.?They forecast that smartphone shipments in 2022 will fall 1~2% year on year.?

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Stay safe and healthy... bye.