01. UMC sales declined and TSMC sales growth slowed

The sales of TSMC, a semiconductor foundry enterprise, increased year on year in January, but the growth rate was lower than that of the previous few months, while the sales of UMC, a Taiwan foundry enterprise, declined in January both month on month and year on year.

In January this year, TSMC achieved sales of NT $200.5 billion (about US $6.65 billion), up 16.2% year-on-year and 3.9% month-on-month. In December 2022, TSMC grew by 23.9% year on year. In November and October, the company reported an annual growth rate of more than 50%.

UMC1's monthly sales volume was NT $19.59 billion (about US $650 million), down 6.5% month-on-month and 4.3% year-on-year.

These sales may mean that UMC and TSMC are beginning to experience a slowdown in demand, which has affected other semiconductor manufacturers. The economic downturn is expected to bottom out in the second half of 2023.

02. The supply of CPU and GPU is limited, and the trend of high price may become normal

In the face of the sharp decline in the sales of PCs and independent display cards, AMD's overall revenue performance in the fourth quarter of 2022 withstood the market storm with an annual increase of 16.0%, but CEO Su Zifeng also admitted that it was taking restrictive measures on the supply of CPU and GPU to maintain a higher chip price.

AMD expects that the revenue in the first quarter of 2023 will be about US $5.3 billion, with a fluctuation of US $0.3 billion and an annual decline rate of about 10%. AMD expects that the business of the client and game business group will decline from the same period last year, partially offset by the growth of the embedded and data center business group. AMD expects that the PC market business will reach the bottom in this quarter, and the data center business will continue to make gains, driving the operation growth this year.

Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, said, "As we enter 2023, we expect that the overall demand environment will be mixed, and the second half of the year will be stronger than the first half. In the PC market, we plan to reduce PCTAM by about 10% by 2023." At the same time, Lisa Su also admitted that we are limiting the supply of CPU and GPU to maintain a higher chip price. At present, most models such as RX7900XT and RX7900XTX are out of stock on the AMD market.

03. In 2022, the chip procurement expenditure of the world's top 10 OEMs will decrease by 7.6%

On February 8, 2023, according to the latest report of Gartner, the chip procurement expenditure of the world's top ten original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) fell by 7.6% in 2022, accounting for 37.2% of the entire market.

Masatsune Yamaji, a senior executive analyst at Gartner, said that in 2022, the pressure of inflation and recession had significantly weakened the demand for PCs and smartphones, affected the production of global OEMs, and led to the inability of major OEMs to increase unit production and shipments.

In addition, the continuous shortage of semiconductors in the automotive, network and industrial electronics markets has increased the average chip price (ASPs) and accelerated the growth of semiconductor revenue in these markets. The above factors led to a decline in the share of head OEMs in the total semiconductor expenditure in 2022 compared with 2021.

Apple ranked first among the top ten chip buyers for the fourth consecutive year. It spent US $67.1 billion to buy chips in 2022, accounting for 11.1% of the market share in 2022; Samsung Electronics chip procurement expenditure increased by 2.2%, ranking second; Sony's chip procurement expenditure in 2022 grew the fastest, up 16.5%.

It is worth noting that Huawei's chip procurement expenditure in 2022 was US $12.01 billion, down 19.4% from 2021, ranking seventh among the top ten semiconductor buyers.

04. Insider: Amkor Shanghai will stop production for one week

On February 10, 2023, according to the supply chain, the production line of Amkor Shanghai, a semiconductor product packaging and testing service provider, will be suspended for one week from February 27 to March 6 due to insufficient orders.

Amkor Shanghai provides a complete set of solutions including wafer pin testing, packaging, testing, bump and designated delivery. Its customers include the world's top chip manufacturers.

As for the shutdown, industry insiders pointed out that this was due to the decline in semiconductor orders, which was related to the overall environment of the global semiconductor industry.

05. Microchip technology plans to increase chip price by 5% in March

On February 8, 2023, according to the supply chain, Microchip plans to raise its price by about 5% in March this year.

The source said that due to the impact of raw material suppliers and OEM prices, the production costs of Microchip Technology continued to increase, and the company had to pass some of the costs on to customers, and would increase the prices of several product lines by about 5% from March 1, 2023.

The source further pointed out that Microchip did not issue a price increase notice for this price increase as before, nor did it disclose the specific product price, but the price increase will be open to all customers.

06. Infineon: The shortage of automobile MCU is expected to ease in the second half of the year

On February 7, 2023, Infineon said recently that the shortage of automobile MCU is expected to ease in the second half of 2023.

Infineon pointed out that the demand for semiconductors in the fields of automobile, renewable energy and security is still strong, but the demand for consumer products has slowed down periodically, and enterprises' spending on IT infrastructure has been weak.

Infineon said that with the continuous development of electric vehicles and ADAS, customers are now more willing to sign capacity reservation agreements or place long-term commitment orders to ensure the supply of semiconductors.

In order to meet these needs, Infineon is increasing its productivity to nearly 1 million units per day. The company disclosed that the production capacity of automobile products in the 2023 fiscal year has been fully booked.

07. Yole: DDR5 technology is driving the development of DRAM modules and DIMM chipsets

According to the data of Yole Intelligence in France, which is owned by Yole Group, the DRAM market rapidly entered a new downward stage in the second half of 2022 after a sudden decline in 2019 and a rise in 2020 and 2021.

According to Yole, many factors, including geopolitical tensions and global inflation, have weakened the demand for DRAM bits and accelerated the transition of oversupply. As an important part of DRAM market, DRAM module is not immune from this macro trend.

Diego Alfaro, an analyst in the semiconductor and software department of Yole Intelligence, said: "In 2022, we expect the PC module market to decline by 36% year-on-year, from US $10.3 billion in 2021 to US $6.6 billion in 2022.".

"For the server module, the market dynamics are better. We expect that the revenue in 2022 will increase by 0.4% year on year to 33.1 billion US dollars. The total DRAM module market will increase from about 42 billion US dollars in 2022 to about 96.3 billion US dollars in 2028, and the compound annual growth rate in 2022-28 will be about 16%. This growth is mainly due to the amazing growth of the server module," Alfaro said.