The Tech week that was... March 21~25

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.??

?Let’s start this week with the latest market research news…

Revenue at the world’s top 10 IC designers soared 48% year-on-year to US$127.4 billion last year, according to the latest data from Trendforce.?Qualcomm Inc retained its top position with revenue expanding 51 percent to US$29.33 billion, driven primarily by rising demand for mobile phone SoCs and IoT devices.?Nvidia climbed one spot to No. 2, as revenue surged 61% to US$24.9billion due to strong demand for GPUs used in gaming PCs and data centers, while Broadcom Inc ranked third, as revenue rose 18% to US$21billion.? 4 Taiwan based companies make up the top 10 with Mediatek in 4th, Novatek jumped to 6th with revenue for consumer SoC’s and display driver chips rising 79%.?Networking IC designer Realtek took 8th spot whilst display driver IC designer Himax entered the top 10 for the first time.

?Global fab equipment spending for front-end facilities is expected to increase 18% year-on-year to an all-time high of US$107 billion in 2022, marking a third consecutive year of growth following a 42% surge in 2021, according to SEMI.?The continued growth is attributed “to the relentless drive to add and upgrade capacity to address a diverse range of markets and emerging applications, solidifying expectations for long-term industry growth to enable electronics for the digital world.”?SEMI forecasts that global fab equipment spending will have another healthy year in 2023 and is expected to remain above the $100 billion mark. Taiwan is expected to lead fab equipment spending in 2022, followed by South Korea and China.

?IC Insights forecasts that the analog IC market will grow 12% in 2022, following the markets record 30% rise in 2021.?They forecast that the analog market will reach US$83.2billion in 2022 due to increased shipments and also rising ASP’s. ?Automotive, communications and power management markets are expected to lead the growth in 2022.?

Trendforce expects that smartphone production will drop to 1.366billion units in 2022, down 2.5%.?They report that slower than expected sales in Q4’21 has led to companies needing to adjust inventory levels of finished goods in Q1’22 causing a sluggish Q1 in terms of production.?Trendforce says that due to serious issues involving geopolitics, inflation, and energy shortages this year, further downward revision of total 2022 production volume cannot be ruled out.

Shipments of smartphones within China fell 31.8% year-on-year to 14.5 million handsets in February, according to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications (CAICT).?This is a 55% drop from the 32.4million handsets in January.

?In industry news

This week Taiwan suffered a 6.6magnitude earthquake centred near Hualien in eastern Taiwan.?Whilst the earthquake caused some fab evacuations and minor machine damage, there was minimal impact on semiconductor operations.?TSMC said that operations had returned to normal with minimal impact on operations.?UMC said part of its production equipment had been affected by the earthquake but that the impact on operations was neglible.?Powerchip said the earthquake has disrupted operations for 2~3hours but this would be recovered.

In Japan Renesas gave an update of the impact of the previous weeks earthquake in Japan saying its operations were expected to fully recover this week.?Its Takasaki Fab had recovered to full production on March 23rd, and that they had lost about 10days worth of production which they will work to recover. The Yonezawa Fab recovered to full capacity on March 20th, and that they had lost about 2days of production. Worst hit was it’s Naka Fab, which is expected to recover to full production by March 26th.??

?Taiwan’s exports expanded for a 24th consecutive month to US$51.56 billion last month increasing 21% yoy, beating an estimate of 9% by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. The growth was supported by robust demand, primarily for smartphones, notebook computers and chips used in 5G smartphones, high-performance computers and vehicles.

Memory manufacturer Kioxia has announced it will begin construction on a new Fab (Fab 2) at it’s Kitakami plant in Iwate Pref, Japan.?It plans to build the Fab jointly with Western Digital to build its proprietary 3D Flash memory BiCS FLASH? devices.?Construction is scheduled to start in April 2022 and is expected to be completed in 2023.

Wafer manufacturer SK Siltron will invest over US$850million over the next 3 years to expand it’s 300mm wafer manufacturing facilities in Gumi National Industrial Complex 3 South Korea.?Construction will start in 1st half 2022, with mass production expected to start in first half 2024.

Taiwan Foundry UMC declined to comment on a rumour that it had been invited to build a 300mm semiconductor Fab in Detroit targeted at 22nm & 28nm nodes for the automotive industry.??

US based lidar company Luminar is acquiring laser manufacturer Freedom Photonics. This acquisition follows a multi-year collaboration and brings fundamental next-generation chip-scale laser technology, IP, and production expertise in-house for Luminar lidar systems.?Freedom photonics is based in Santa Barbara, Ca, USA and was founded in 2005.

Australian company BluGlass Ltd has agreed to acquire a US laser diode Fab in Fremont, CA, USA to fast track BluGlass’ growth strategy, significantly increasing its laser manufacturing capacity and bringing forward higher-value product development timelines.

Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang has said that the company is interested in exploring using Intel’s foundry services for its production but adding that foundry discussions take a long time as it's about integrating supply chains.

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Stay safe and healthy... bye.