Weekly Roundup: Electronics Industry Headlines (23 Dec - 27 Dec 2024)

● Canalys: Total PC shipments in the United States are expected to approach 70 million units in 2024

● TechInsights: HBM shipments are expected to grow 70% year-on-year in 2025

● Omdia: Total semiconductor revenue in the first three quarters of 2024 reached US$494 billion

● TrendForce: The total number of electric vehicles is estimated to reach 26 million in 2025

● Canalys: Cloud service spending in mainland China increased by 11% in the third quarter of 2024

SK Hynix

SK Hynix has shown a mixed performance in the memory market recently. On the one hand, the company has accelerated the mass production of its 16-layer HBM3E products, aiming to achieve mass production and supply in the first half of next year. It has also started providing samples to customers, signaling its technological advancements and market competitiveness in the high-end memory sector. Additionally, SK Hynix has secured a large order for high-bandwidth memory from Broadcom, with deliveries expected to begin in the second half of 2025, further solidifying its market position. On the other hand, despite technological breakthroughs and order growth, the overall memory industry is facing a downturn. SK Hynix has lowered its fourth-quarter earnings forecast, reflecting the pressure on its DRAM business caused by weak demand for traditional IT products such as smartphones and personal computers. According to the latest financial report, although SK Hynix's fourth-quarter operating profit increased compared to the previous quarter, it fell short of previous expectations, indicating that the overall market outlook remains uncertain.

ADI

Recently, ADI's market performance has shown a positive trend. Market demand has gradually increased, and spot market prices have remained stable with some products even experiencing slight price increases. The company's performance is continuously recovering, and it is expected to return to positive growth in the second quarter of 2025, driven primarily by the industrial market. Additionally, ADI has significantly enhanced its digital product portfolio through the acquisition of FlexLogix, improving its market competitiveness. Overall, ADI's market demand and pricing are stable, and the strategic acquisition has further strengthened its technological capabilities and market position in the FPGA field. ?

Infineon

Infineon's recent plan to localize chip production in China demonstrates its commitment to the Chinese market and its response to the urgent need of Chinese customers for localized production of critical components. Currently, Infineon is still in the process of clearing low-margin inventory and is expected to complete destocking and resume normal bookings in the second half of this fiscal year. Despite the overall weakness in the automotive chip market, Infineon's Automotive Electronics Division (ATV) achieved 2% growth in fiscal year 2024, with particularly strong performance in electric vehicles (xEV) and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), thanks to the company's technological advantages in microcontrollers (MCUs) and intelligent power solutions. China is a core driver of Infineon's growth, with its revenue share in China increasing from 25% in fiscal year 2023 to 27% in fiscal year 2024.

Xilinx

According to recent industry trends, Xilinx faces continued price increases and tight supply chains in 2024. Starting from December 2024, some series of Xilinx products (including 20nm, 28nm, 40nm, 65nm, 90nm, etc.) will increase by 20%, which is a continuation of the substantial price increase in 2023. This price increase may significantly increase the cost of customers using FPGAs, especially in the face of the risk of shortages of imported products. In addition, Xilinx has implemented a quota system for 16nm-28nm materials since July, resulting in only about 10% of the quota in China, and the original manufacturer intends to cancel orders in transit. Some series such as the 7 series and 6 series still have a certain amount of inventory, but the price fluctuations are not large. The discontinuation of the 2C series and unstable supply also expose customers to greater supply risks. After the Spring Festival in 2024, Xilinx also announced the discontinuation of some important products, such as the XC9500XL Cool Runner and Spartan series, requiring customers to submit final orders before June 29, 2024, and delivery before December 28, 2024. These changes force customers to plan stocking and alternatives in advance to ensure a stable supply chain.

ON

According to the latest financial report and market dynamics released by ONsemi, overall demand continues to be weak, especially in the automotive industry. The revenue forecast for the fourth quarter is lower than market expectations, mainly affected by the decline in demand from major automotive customers such as Ideal Auto, BYD and Xiaopeng Auto. At present, spot demand mainly comes from products such as discontinued materials, interface ICs and switching regulators. However, ONsemi has maintained positive progress in technological innovation and launched the Treo platform, which integrates bipolar, CMOS and DMOS technologies (BCD technology) based on a 65-nanometer process node. It can support voltages up to 90 volts and has high performance and agility, which has attracted widespread attention from customers and the media. The launch of the Treo platform demonstrates ONsemi's technological advantages in the fields of smart power and smart sensing, and despite the overall sluggish demand, it still provides potential for the company's future development.

AI Chips

Recently, the AI-related semiconductor chip hardware market has continued to grow, especially the demand for GPUs and high-performance AI server storage solutions (such as HBM) has increased dramatically. GPU revenue is expected to reach $51 billion by 2025, an annual increase of 27%. At the same time, HBM chip revenue has also exploded, and is expected to grow by more than 284% in 2024 and 70% in 2025. In particular, the increase in AI reasoning workloads has driven the demand for HBM. It is expected that by 2026, more than 40% of HBM chips will be used for AI reasoning. AI Agent (artificial intelligence body) as a new development direction of AI technology has also received widespread attention. It is expected that by 2033, the global large model market size will grow from $4.5 billion in 2023 to $82.1 billion, with an average annual growth rate of 33.7%. These trends bring rich opportunities to the AI-related industry chain.

Power Devices

Recently, the power device market has faced certain uncertainties, mainly due to geopolitical instability and expected tariffs, which have caused buyers to postpone their purchase decisions and demand has dropped significantly in November. However, the month-on-month increase in the design index indicates a recovery in future sales, and market demand is expected to stabilize in the second quarter of 2025. In terms of price, the overall price index fell slightly in the fourth quarter, and the price index of diodes and transistors fell slightly from 89.64 and 180.35 in September to 87.45 and 176.61 in November. However, prices are expected to rise rapidly in December, and buyers are advised to take advantage of this trend to accelerate orders before the first quarter of 2025. In addition, the batch delivery cycle of diodes and transistors improved in the fourth quarter of 2024, with the proportion of less than 25 weeks increasing to 89.72% and 82.23% respectively, showing that the responsiveness of the supply chain is improving.

Storage

Recent storage market trends show that the prices of low-capacity embedded products such as eMMC continue to rise due to tight supply, and market differentiation has become the norm. Specifically, due to the discontinuation of old process NAND resources by some original manufacturers, the supply of low-capacity eMMC products is tight, and prices continue to rise slightly, especially the prices of 8GB/16GB/32GB eMMC products continue to rise. At the same time, the prices of large-capacity eMMC products and LPDDR products remain the same. In the channel market, the shortage of some low-priced supplies has led to a slight increase in the prices of some SATA SSD products, but the market response is limited and the price increase has achieved little effect. The price of DDR particles has diverged, among which the prices of DDR4 16Gb and DDR 8Gb 3200 have changed, while the prices of DDR4 8Gb eTT/4Gb eTT remain unchanged. Overall, the storage market has shown structural changes, and the price trends of different products and capacities are different. It is expected that this differentiation situation will become the norm.