Weekly Industry Highlights (Weekly 4 for 2025)

Market: ARM, MLCC, Semiconductor

01. Arm plans to raise prices by 300% and produce its own chips

Chip technology provider Arm Holdings (O9Ty.F) is developing a long-term strategy to raise prices by as much as 300% and has discussed competing with its biggest customers in moves to do so, according to Reuters, San Francisco, 13 January. While Arm has played a key role in the rise of smartphones and energy-efficient data centre chips, it is still small compared to its customers, with revenues of $3.23 billion in fiscal 2024. In that fiscal year, Apple's revenue from hardware products powered by Arm-based chips has out-sized Arm by more than 90 times.

02. Global semiconductor market expected to grow 11% to $697.1 billion by 2025

January 14, according to SemiMedia news, analysts forecast the global semiconductor market will reach $697.1 billion in 2025, an 11% year-on-year growth, mainly due to the strong demand for AI data centres, electric vehicles, while the smartphone market is still relatively sluggish. U.S. technology giants have increased investment in artificial intelligence data centres, such as Microsoft plans to invest $80 billion in fiscal year 2025, becoming a key driver of growth, in which the demand for GPUs and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) is particularly prominent.

Statista estimates that the global GPU market will reach $270 billion in 2029, and the HBM market will triple in 2030 to $100 billion. Micron Technology is sold out of HBM capacity for 2025 and has received orders for 2026.

03. AI infrastructure to dominate MLCC demand by 2025

U.S. economy exceeded expectations at the end of 2024, but high interest rates in 2025 may dampen spending and investment.TrendForce expects MLCC shipments to fall 3% YoY to 1146.7 billion units in Q1 2025.Stronger U.S. economy in December 2024 led to Fed rate cuts in 2025 may be less frequent, and high interest rates continue. Dell, HP and other brands accelerate H2 2024 educational laptop contract orders in response to potential tariffs from January 2025 onwards.

Compal and other ODMs asked to ship by H2 2024.On 15 January, TrendForce said growing demand from MLCC suppliers at the beginning of the year, with GB200 orders from Foxconn and others and pre-Lunar New Year inventories driving a surge in MLCC shipments in early 2025.

Original Manufacturer Updates: Infineon, Corelink, Wolfspeed

04. Infineon's new power module site in Thailand

January 15 news, Infineon will build a new semiconductor back-end production base in Thailand's Northampton Province, focusing on power module production, has announced the start of construction. The new base is designed to optimise the manufacturing business, supported by the Board of Investment of Thailand, the first building is expected to operate in early 2026, the subsequent capacity enhancement will be based on the market demand for flexible management, 2025 related expenditures have been included in the company's capital expenditure forecast. Rutger Wijburg, COO of Infineon, said that in order to meet future customer demand and enhance supply chain resilience, Infineon has built an advanced back-end wafer fab in Thailand, which is a key step in the strategy to diversify manufacturing, optimise costs, and match the expansion of front-end production capacity, and that the new base will be highly efficient, resilient, and high-quality to ensure reliable delivery of high-quality products.

05. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) may achieve full-year gross margin positive for the first time

On 15 January, the ‘Science and Technology Board Daily’ news, 2024 global semiconductor market steady state recovery, new energy vehicles and intelligent network car ‘two new’ policy promotion, as well as automotive electrification and intelligent technology advances, so that the new energy vehicle market development is strong. Corelink integration, said its SiC MOSFET, 12-inch silicon-based wafers and other new products in the head of the rapid introduction of customers and mass production, 2024 is expected to achieve revenue of about 1.016 billion yuan. Benefiting from the development of electrification, intelligentisation and internet connectivity, Corellian Integration has expanded its SiC business to a number of domestic and international OEMs and Tier1 customers in the automotive field and industrial control field in 2024, and has achieved large-scale mass production.

Corelink integration is expected, 2025 new energy vehicle market demand will also be in the old for new policy driven by expanding, as well as automotive intelligence and electrification brought about by the demand for integration, the company's products and technology reserves of the first-mover advantage will gradually be released. At the same time, with the cost structure continues to optimise, 8-inch wafer production line equipment successively out of the depreciation period, profitability will continue to improve.

06. Wolfspeed Closes Texas Facility and Shifts Focus to SiC Wafer Fabrication

On 16 January, Wolfspeed announced the closure of its facility in Farmers Branch, Texas, and listed it for sale, SemiMedia reported. The 26-acre facility consists of four buildings, with key features including a 14-megawatt data centre, expandable to 28 megawatts, and a 162,500-square-foot semiconductor factory with labs, shops, and office space. The closure will result in the layoff of 75 employees, and production is expected to cease soon.

The decision is in line with Wolfspeed's strategy to streamline operations and focus on 200mm silicon carbide (SiC) wafer production in response to declining demand for 150mm wafers, and Wolfspeed has also indefinitely suspended plans to build a new facility in Saarland, Germany. Instead, the company received $750 million under the CHIPS Act through an agreement with the US Department of Commerce. These funds will support the construction of new plants in North Carolina and New York and the transfer of its primary power device manufacturing to New York.

Industry information: Data centre components, tablets, chip subsidies

07. Data centre component and semiconductor costs will continue to rise in the face of tight supply conditions

On 16 January, Moody's, the world's leading credit rating agency, released a report stating that the cost of key data centre components is expected to rise further as global supply constraints persist. Demand for data centres is expected to increase in 2025, driven by rapid growth in artificial intelligence, cloud computing and data storage services.

New hosted data centres are being developed to meet the needs of small and medium-sized tenants, who typically pay higher rental rates per kilowatt per month. While vacancy rates may briefly rise slightly in some markets as new hosting capacity becomes available, supply constraints are likely to result in vacancy rates remaining low in the long run. To meet this surging demand, developers are taking on more debt to build and upgrade data centres. hyperscalers such as Microsoft, AWS, Google, Meta and Oracle are rapidly expanding their infrastructure globally, including in emerging and smaller markets.

08. Second-generation OnePlus tablet upgraded to Qualcomm

OnePlus has unveiled its second-generation Android tablet, replacing its MediaTek chip with Qualcomm's latest Snapdragon technology.The OnePlus Pad 2 comes with Qualcomm's leading-edge Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip, replacing the slower MediaTek Dimensity 9000 processor. This improved tablet is designed to address the major issues of last year's model. However, the additional features of the OnePlus Pad 2 will cost users more and are expected to cost $70 more than the original price.

09. China begins investigation into alleged dumping of United States chip subsidies

China will investigate whether the United States has given its chipmakers an unfair advantage through incentives and subsidies, among other things, or illegally undercut the price of Chinese products, Bloomberg reported on 16 January. China's Ministry of Commerce said the investigation was started in response to protests from the domestic chip industry. Chinese chipmakers have expressed dissatisfaction with the U.S. Chip and Science Act, which provides about $39 billion in funding to entice companies such as TSMC and Samsung Electronics to establish high-end chip manufacturing capabilities in the United States. In a statement, the China Semiconductor Industry Association said: ‘The US Chip and Science Act violates the basic principles of a market economy and has had a profound and significant impact on the global semiconductor supply chain.