Taiwan media: Fabs increase after year!
Wafer Foundry United Power, World Advanced plans to raise prices for the second time after the Spring Festival, by 10% to 15%.
According to Taiwan Economic Daily, United Electric has told 12-inch customers that delivery times have been extended by nearly a month because capacity is too full. Downstream sealed test plant ASE, Jingyuan electricity, etc. also because of surging demand and production capacity tight, intentional price increases.
The companies declined to comment, stressing only that customer demand was very strong.
Since 2020, many factors, such as the epidemic and insufficient production capacity, have caused chip shortages and price increases one after another. United's production capacity continues to be full, and earlier this month, contract prices for 12-inch wafers followed suit, following a series of increases for 8-inch wafers. Subsequently, the world advanced and Li Ji have also followed up the adjustment of 8 inch wafer foundry prices.
Industry insiders pointed out that United Power, the world advanced last price increase, mainly for the first quarter of this year's production customers. Due to the recent epidemic has a serious trend, as well as the recovery of the automobile market, leading to the 8-inch OEM capacity continued to be tight. It takes about three to four months for the film to be produced, and the price increase after the Spring Festival will see benefits in the second quarter financial results.
Thanks to the housing economy, the demand for consumer electronics and computer-related applications continues to grow, and the proportion of chips in 5G smart phones and Internet of Things devices also increases. The demand for power management ics, driver ics, fingerprint recognition chips, and image sensors (CIS) is booming. These chips are mainly produced by 8-inch wafers, resulting in a continued shortage of 8-inch wafers.
Taiwan media: Fabs increase after year! The origin is the United States sanctions on the mainland
Even if TSMC shows a willingness to speed up its response to the shortage of chips for cars, it may not be able to solve the semiconductor shortage in the short term. The Japanese media believe that the continuous sanctions imposed by the United States on Huawei and SMIC are the origin of the semiconductor shortage.
The global shortage of semiconductors, especially automotive chips, is the most serious. Japanese media attributed this to the U.S. sanctions against Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International, which have led to a flood of orders to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing and United Semiconductor, which account for more than 60 percent of the global supply of wafers. Even if Taiwan Semiconductor companies speed up their response, some expect that the balance between supply and demand will be restored in the second half of this year.
Last year, the United States cut off Huawei's supply chain of advanced process semiconductors, causing Huawei to rush shipments, which occupied the production capacity of TSMC in August and September, the report said. At the end of the year, the company imposed sanctions on SMIC. As a result, Qualcomm, the leading IC designer in the United States, had to visit TSMC and United Microelectronics one after another to find an alternative to SMIC's mature manufacturing process, which made the semiconductor industry, which was already busy with personal computers, game consoles and smart phones, more difficult to bear.
The mature process wafers produced by SMIC, despite their lower technical requirements, are indispensable parts for automotive sensors and power management. However, these wafers have small profit margins and are less attractive to foundries. Moreover, many mature processes and equipment manufacturers, including 8-inch wafers, have ceased to supply new machines and have limited room for expansion.
Japanese media pointed out that the shortage of car chips was just the straw that broke the camel's back. In the spring of last year, most of the automakers cut production sharply due to the impact of the epidemic, but the Chinese mainland was the first to recover, and by June it had recovered to 11 percent year-on-year growth. Meanwhile, as the epidemic spread to Europe and the United States, they only had about three months 'supply of auto semiconductor parts and did not draw up a relatively optimistic production plan, so they temporarily added orders when they decided to increase production in October. Automotive semiconductor manufacturers cannot keep up with their preparations.
Due to mature process wafers, the basic attitude of foundries is to use depreciated equipment and not to invest more, so it is difficult to solve the shortage of automotive wafers in the short term. Topology Industry Research, a think-tank, has optimistically argued that the problem should ease by the end of June and that a full solution could take until the end of the year.
In addition, World Advanced, a subsidiary of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., also told the Nihon Keizai Shimbun that it is difficult to estimate the number of repeated orders, in addition to the sudden increase of orders. If the demand is only expressed verbally, semiconductor manufacturers will not easily start production because of the risk of cancellation of orders.