In 2021, under the fluctuations of serious core shortages, US sanctions, the Metaverse and other events, the chip industry can be described as full of dangers along the way, but it is a year of hidden vitality and hope. Here, COSCO Asia Electronics has counted the top ten key words of the chip industry in 2021. Let's take a time machine and walk through 2021 again!
lack of core
The problem that the semiconductor industry cannot circumvent in 2021 - the lack of cores.
According to a research report released by Goldman Sachs, more than 169 industries worldwide have been greatly affected by chip shortages, including everything from steel products and concrete production to air conditioner manufacturing, beer production, and even soap manufacturing. Influence. Goldman Sachs research shows that industries that spend more than 1% of the industry's GDP on chips will be affected by chip shortages.
Among them, the automobile industry's spending on chips accounts for 4.7% of the industry's GDP, which shows the nervousness of automobile chips. To this end, many manufacturers in the automotive industry have eased the pressure of core shortages by reducing production. According to DPA, survey data released by the German Automobile Research Institute (CAR) on December 21 shows that the production of passenger cars in Germany is expected to be 2.85 million in 2021, only 50% of the production in 2017, also in 1974. The lowest annual production since the oil crisis. Industry experts have warned that Germany, a major car-producing country, is more affected by semiconductor shortages than other car-producing countries.
price increase
The price increase letter will be issued from 2020 to 2021, and there are not many manufacturers who will increase the price at the beginning of the year in 2022. It can be said that the electronic man is already heartbroken in the face of the price increase letter that is flying all over the sky.
Some manufacturers increase their prices from once a year to several times a year, and issue price increase letters one after another. Among them, August can be said to be the most popular time for the issuance of price increase letters, from TSMC leading the rise, adjusting the price of foundry, to Maxim's announcement of a 6% increase in all products, and Holtek, STMicroelectronics, Shin-Etsu Chemical, Ziguang Exhibition Rui, etc. According to a rough calculation, in August alone, 9 chip manufacturers announced price increases, which is very lively.
The price increase has always been around the chip industry in 2021, and the price increase will ultimately pay for the terminal merchants and consumers. According to information compiled by industry organizations, 21 major international auto companies recently announced their second-quarter results, which continued their good performance in the first quarter, with double-digit year-on-year growth in revenue and substantial improvement in net profit. BMW, Daimler and Volkswagen achieved a profit of 30.3 billion euros, while Toyota and Tesla's net profit hit a record high.
Delivery date
What? There is stock, hurry up! Presumably, this is the emotion of many IC procurement practitioners. In the chip market in 2021, it can be said that the spot is king, and if there is a spot, it has the right to speak.
How outrageous is the lengthy chip lead time? According to Susquehanna's latest report, the chip lead time in November was 4 days longer than October, reaching 22.3 weeks, which is the longest lead time since the agency started tracking data in 2017. The agency said that the delivery time of power management chips and microcontroller chips has been particularly prolonged, and the supply pressure on many chips will continue into the first half of 2022. Hu Shubin, co-CEO of Asustek, revealed that "the delivery time of some IC factories is 52 weeks, and even 78 weeks for one or two parts."
Metaverse
What is the Metaverse? Professor Chen Gang and Dr. Dong Haoyu of Peking University define the Metaverse as follows: "The Metaverse is a virtual world that is linked and created by scientific and technological means, a virtual world that maps and interacts with the real world, and a digital living space with a new social system. "
"Metaverse" is a popular fried chicken player in 2021, and was selected into the "Top Ten Internet Terms in 2021". In the major tracks, if you don't bring the word metaverse, you will feel behind in the torrent of the times. Now, companies are moving closer to the Metaverse. A few days ago, China Mobile Migu cooperated with the Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival to create the world's first "5G Metaverse Film Festival" by combining 5G, cloud VR, AR and other technologies. The previous Baidu Developer Conference was called in the Metaverse.
According to a Bloomberg industry research report, the Metaverse will reach a market size of US$800 billion in 2024, and PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that the market size of the Metaverse will reach US$1.5 trillion in 2030.
new energy vehicles
The popularity of new energy vehicles in 2021 is inseparable from the crazy involution of major car companies. New energy vehicles are strongly supported by national policies, and major car companies have stopped building cars and entered a stage of explosive growth.
According to industry experts, chips are equally important for new energy vehicles and fuel vehicles. From the perspective of a single vehicle, the chip usage of new energy vehicles is more than that of traditional fuel vehicles. Currently, the average chip value for a single vehicle is $350, while a pure electric car can be worth up to $770 and a premium EV can exceed $1,500.
According to data from the China Automobile Association, in the first 11 months of 2021, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in my country has reached 2.99 million. At the same time, the penetration rate of the new energy vehicle market has also increased from 9.4% in the first half of 2021 to 12.7%. In November 2021, the retail penetration rate of domestic new energy passenger vehicles exceeded 20%, reaching 20.8%. According to data from the China Automobile Association, in the first 11 months of 2021, the sales volume of new energy vehicles in my country has reached 2.99 million. At the same time, the penetration rate of the new energy vehicle market has also increased from 9.4% in the first half of 2021 to 12.7%. In November 2021, the retail penetration rate of domestic new energy passenger vehicles exceeded 20%, reaching 20.8%.
Factory expansion
With the butterfly effect brought about by the lack of cores, the trend of major foundries entering the fab to expand production is inevitable. According to the latest research report of "IC INSIGHTS", it is estimated that global semiconductor capital expenditure will reach a record US$152 billion in 2021, and about one-third will come from the capital expenditure of wafer foundries, including 3/5/7 nanometers. Spending on new fabs and equipment shows increasing reliance on the foundry business model.
From TSMC's announcement to build a 12-inch wafer fab with a 5-nanometer process in Arizona, USA, to joining hands with Japan's SONY Semiconductor, it will establish a joint venture subsidiary Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing (JASM) in Kumamoto, Kyushu, Japan, and start building 12-inch wafers in 2022. Round fab; Samsung followed, spending $17 billion to build a 12-inch wafer fab in Tyler, Texas, based on a 5-nanometer advanced process. In addition, there are large foundries such as Intel, UMC, and PSMC that have plans to expand production.
It can be seen that wafer expansion is a hot trend in 2021. SEMI estimates that as many new 8-inch and 12-inch fabs will enter mass production from 2020 to 2024, statistics from all announcements from global semiconductor manufacturers will end in 2021. As of September, between now and 2024, 25 8-inch fabs will be put into mass production. Therefore, from 2020 to 2024, the total wafer production capacity of the global 8-inch fab is expected to grow by 18%.
Talent shortage
Talent is scarce and supply is less than demand, which is the phenomenon of the recruitment market in the chip industry today. To this end, many companies spare no expense to poach people.
The chip industry is a technology-intensive industry. It is not something that can be done with money. It needs a team of talented people. Therefore, talents are particularly important for the chip industry. In 2021, the semiconductor track will be hot, and there will be many companies that will end up making cores, but talents will be hard to find. According to relevant data, around 2021, the scale of talent demand in my country's integrated circuit industry is about 722,000, and the talent gap is 261,000. The contradiction between talent supply and demand is prominent.
A few days ago, SMIC's "Jiang Lai Liang walk" incident triggered a discussion about top talents in the industry. Although this personnel earthquake has temporarily come to an end, it has once again exposed the problem of the lack of high-end talents in the integrated circuit industry. Ren Zhengfei once said, "Every piece of equipment and material in chip manufacturing is very sophisticated and very difficult to make, and it cannot be done without high-end experienced experts."
US sanctions
U.S. sanctions came into the public eye from Huawei. On May 15, the U.S. Commerce Department announced that foreign companies using U.S. chip-making equipment would be required to obtain U.S. licenses before supplying certain chips to affiliates such as Huawei or HiSilicon. This requirement prevents manufacturers that use eda, such as TSMC, from producing chips for Huawei. Huawei can only produce chips through third-party entrusted chips, or purchase chips that are not controlled by the United States, such as MediaTek.
Affected by this, Huawei's revenue in 2021 is expected to be only 634 billion yuan, and 891.4 billion in 2020, a year-on-year decrease of 257.4 billion, a drop of 28.9%.
Since the beginning of the trade war between China and the United States, as of December 18, 2021, and since March 22, 2018, the US government and its functional departments have included a total of 611 Chinese companies, institutions and individuals on the Entity List. )middle. It is commonly referred to as the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) trade blacklist. Among them, 63 were included in the Entity List in 2018, 151 in 2019, 240 in 2020, and 157 in 2021 (as of December 18). The Bureau of Industry and Security of the U.S. Department of Commerce uses the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to control 611 Chinese entities, mainly involving three categories, one is universities and research institutions related to information technology, nuclear power, and defense and military industries; It is an institution and industrial company related to national defense, military industry and aerospace technology; the first category is a technology industry entity related to communications, semiconductors, artificial intelligence, etc. These entities are placed in the EAR's 10 categories of control content.
Domestic substitution
The chip market in 2021 is shrouded in an atmosphere of "rising and rising". The increase in chips from brands such as ST and TI is even more than a hundred times. It is not uncommon for chips to rise from ten or twenty yuan to four or five hundred yuan. Waiting time. Therefore, most companies have embarked on the road of seeking domestic alternatives in an attempt to find suitable chip replacements. Among them, ST's MCU is the popular replacement player. Generally, the GD series of Zhaoyi Innovation and the HK32 series of Shenzhen Hangshun are mostly compatible.
epidemic
The epidemic in 2021 has not disappeared, but has become more and more intense. After several rounds of mutation, it is still active in the public eye.
Among the top ten semiconductor suppliers ranked by IC Insights, Intel, Samsung Electronics, Micron, Broadcom, and Texas Instruments all have factories in Southeast Asia, and their factories are mainly concentrated in Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore and other places. Southeast Asia, an important part of the global semiconductor and even electronics industries, has been deeply affected by the repeated epidemics since 2021.
Since the second half of 2021, the epidemic situation in Southeast Asian countries led by Malaysia has intensified. In recent days, the number of newly diagnosed patients has repeatedly hit new highs. Chaos such as closing cities and escaping factories threatens the already fragile semiconductor supply chain. The complete shutdown of car and chip factories has cost Malaysia at least 150,000 units of production.
In recent days, the severe epidemic in Xi'an has also threatened the stability of the chip supply chain. As an investment and production center for high-tech enterprises, Xi'an has gathered a large number of technology companies including chip companies. Micron said the reduction in labor density at Micron's Xi'an factory due to the lockdown had some impact on the production levels of the assembly and testing business of DRAM chip products at the Xi'an factory, including delivery delays. Samsung's statement on the same day also said that in order to ensure the health and safety of its employees and partners, it has decided to temporarily adjust the operation of its manufacturing plant in Xi'an, China, and will take all necessary measures, including using the global manufacturing network to ensure that customers are not affected. .
It can be said that the epidemic has exacerbated the "lack of core".
Summary of COSCO Asia
Looking back at the whole year of 2021, it is still a year of core shortages, price increases, and epidemics. At the same time, this has also promoted the accelerated reshuffle of the semiconductor industry, which is a year of rapid development of the chip industry.
Looking forward to 2022, can the supply of chips be balanced? In this regard, Mao Zheng, chief analyst of Huaxin Securities Electronics, believes: "We expect the entire production capacity (tight) link may continue to the end of 2022 or 2023. 2022 The overall (capacity) is still tight, and it will not gradually improve until the fourth quarter.