1. 2017 Semiconductor R & D Expenditure Top10: Some manufacturers are investing less and earn more
Recently, IC Insights latest IC Industry Forecast Report McClean Report pointed out that Top10 semiconductor research and development spending in 2017 increased to 35.9 billion US dollars, 34 billion US dollars in 2016 an increase of 6%. Intel spent more on research and development than any other semiconductor company, reaching $ 13.1 billion, accounting for 36% of R & D spending of Top10 semiconductors, accounting for 21.2% of last year's semiconductor sales, R & D spending 22% of the total global research and development expenditures in 2017 reached 58.9 billion US dollars.
IC insight Top 10 semiconductor research and development expenditures (including semiconductor manufacturers and pure IC design company)
According to the latest report, Intel's research and development spending increased only 3% in 2017, down from an average annual growth rate of 8% since 2001. However, Intel's R & D expenditure exceeds the following four companies - Qualcomm (Qualcomm) Broadcom, Samsung and Toshiba.
Over the past two decades, Intel's R & D and sales have risen sharply as the cost of new IC technologies continues to rise, with R & D spending accounting for 21.2% of sales in 2017, down from 24.0% in 2015 Compared with 16.4% in 2010, 14.5% in 2005, 16.0% in 2000 and only 9.3% in 1995.
Qualcomm, the largest pure IC designer in the industry, ranked second in research and development spending and for the first time since 2012. Qualcomm's semiconductors-related R & D spending dropped 4% in 2017, Year drop of 7%, closely tied to third place Broadcom and fourth place Samsung, which rose 4% and 19% respectively.
Despite a 19% increase in Samsung's R & D spending in 2017, Samsung has the lowest R & D spending among the top ten companies, with R & D spending accounting for only 5.2% of sales last year. Samsung's revenue growth for semiconductors in 2017 49%, mainly driven by the strong growth of DRAM and NAND flash memory, but its R & D sales accounted for more than a percentage point drop from 6.5% in 2016.
In 2017, Micron's sales also surged 77%, but its R & D spending increased 8%, research and development accounted for 7.5%, compared with 12.5% in 2016. Similarly, sales of SK Hynix increased in 2017 79%, while its R & D expenditure increased by 14% in 2017, which resulted in a 6.5% R & D share and 10.2% in 2016.
Toshiba, which is ranked fifth, and TSMC, which is ranked sixth, enjoyed almost the same R & D expenditures in 2017. Toshiba's share of R & D spending dropped 7%, while TSMC posted the largest increase in R & D expenditure among the top ten One of the vendors is up 20% in 2017 as the company spells out new process technology with competitors such as Samsung and GlobalFoundries, whose sales have risen 9% this year to $ 32.2 billion.
Top 10 also includes MediaTek, Micron and Nvidia, which rose from No. 11 in 2016 to No. 9 in NXP and SK Hynix in the rankings for 2017. Overall, Top 10 semiconductor research and development spending increased by an average of 6% in 2017, 4% above R & D expense growth for the entire semiconductor industry. In 2017, Top10 spent a total of 35.9 billion, more than the $ 23 billion of other semiconductor companies expenditure.
In addition, a total of 18 semiconductor suppliers invested more than $ 1 billion in research and development expenses in 2017. The other eight manufacturers are NXP, TI, ST, AMD, Renesas, Sony, ADI and GlobalFoundries. Chuan)
2. Zhang Zhongmou: The semiconductor industry is definitely worth investing in iron rice bowl
Set micro-grid news, Lunar New Year is often the peak of the transfer, for young people looking for work, TSMC Chairman Zhang Zhongmou that the semiconductor industry is an iron rice bowl, it is definitely worth the young people to invest, but to join a good company, but also to be competent .
According to the Central News Agency quoted Zhang Zhongmou think there is no certain answer, he said, some people can start a business, and even many successful entrepreneurs, is to start without graduation .
Zhang Zhongmou said that many people start their own businesses after many years of work, and more people are going to work or not to start their own businesses in their lives.
Zhang Zhongmou said it depends on each individual's own qualities, character, mainly to see the creative young people if there is a very early idea, after graduation creative, or even when college is creative, and this idea is someone Will support, shareholders will be funded, may wish to start.
If there is no such idea, or I think creative, but no one funding, Zhang Zhongmou said that I am afraid to go to work first, after work for a while, maybe you will learn enough to make their own ideas, then you can start a business .
Whether the semiconductor industry is worth the investment of young people, Zhang Zhongmou said that semiconductor is a very basic industry and absolutely necessary in a modern and civilized world. Food and agriculture are basic industries. Although the semiconductor industry has undergone rapid growth, its future growth Or higher than the average economy.
Therefore, he said, the semiconductor industry definitely deserves to be invested by young people. Because the industry will grow at a higher rate of economic growth than the country and the world, it is needed by the world and it should be an iron rice bowl. Only the course must be qualified and well- the company.
3. Semiconductor Offensive and defensive (1): Google seeking Samsung
Editor's note: The global semiconductor market is considered to have entered a "super cycle" of growing demand, but the market conditions have been volatile. Even so, several major manufacturers are still very strong. Nikkei Chinese network will be divided into 3 times tracking and analysis of the global semiconductor industry Dynamic, and China's move.
After New Year's Day, the temperature in Hua Cheng, a suburb of Seoul in South Korea, has dropped below zero.Great executives from Google, Facebook and Amazon have visited Samsung Electronics' semiconductor factory in a few days. "Please supply our latest DRAM." The three U.S. companies are in 2017 at Samsung set up offices around the permanent sales chief visited one after another Samsung.
Around Samsung's huge factories, manufacturing facilities and raw materials companies in Japan and the United States set up bases to decide on their own shipments based on technical negotiations with Samsung and Samsung's output, and for Samsung they are suppliers. Currently not only limited to suppliers, Samsung's strength has attracted as Google IT clients such as Google are attracted to Seoul.
The rise of Samsung's position is due to the explosive growth in memory demand, which has driven the memory market due to the accelerating demand for storage search and e-commerce data, mass-market video release, etc. Data from the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Organization (WSTS) show that in 2017, The global memory market reached 122.9 billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 60% over the same period of last year.
Samsung holds 47% of the global share in DRAMs that handle fast but lost data after a power outage, accounting for 35% of the NAND flash area that holds data even with the power turned off, ranking the first in two categories in the world.
'Due to the explosive growth of data volume due to the development of cloud computing and artificial intelligence, it is difficult to imagine how much the semiconductor market will grow', and on December 14, 2017, the semiconductor manufacturing equipment giant, Applied Materials ) Jiang Ren-Dou, the director of Korean-owned corporation, pointed out at a seminar in Seoul that the semiconductor market will continue to prosper after 2018. Jiang Ren-dou said that AI-related servers want 4x the current memory capacity and the market is likely to expand to 2, 3 times' .
The market has been steadily expanding despite the ever-changing memory prices: PCs, digital cameras, feature phones, smartphones ... With the digitization of home appliances, new stages of memory are being created each and every time.
Today, several uses of memory that store large amounts of data come in at the same time and the market will grow by leaps and bounds, with the Internet of Things coming and the amount of data stored will further increase.
In early December 2017, the Samsung memory business unit in Hwaseongbang boils in. Samsung's 4th bonus was only distributed to employees in the department in 2017. Ordinary employees earn about RMB58,100 in conversion to RMB. Employees of the division can get an annual salary of nearly 600,000 yuan when they are under 40, and the bonus will be even higher.
The chairman of the Samsung Institute of Technology, Kwon Hyeon-hyun, got a salary of about 86,023,500 yuan only in the first half of 2017. The reason why the revenue was so high is that the right-of-way Wunxuan has been Samsung's general semiconductor business as of October Of the directors.Insisting Samsung, Samsung's leading semiconductor business executives seem to pay no ceiling, but the memory of the market there is also fragile, facing the moment I do not know will fall into the imbalance between supply and demand in the early 2000s, focusing on high-speed The growth of large-capacity communications, many companies have together to increase production of optical fiber. Emerging communications companies have been born, investment funds have also continued to inflow, the result quickly fell into the oversupply.
Today's semiconductor industry lack of vigilance on the deterioration of the market.This is because in addition to the United States IT companies, other companies to promote the growth of the industry are also emerging.Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and other fast-growing Chinese enterprises have a presence. Chinese companies such as the three U.S. businesses at Samsung's Hwaseong Fortress (Google, Facebook and Amazon) are on the rise, Tokyo-based Tokai Noriko Ishino said "China's large IT companies are very much like the United States. Double
When Google said in talks with Samsung in the fall of 2017 that "every month it takes 20,000 300mm silicon wafers (made of memory) 'and requires Samsung to supply DRAM memory. DRAMs should have been ordered in quantities, but Google But to measure the manufacturer's unit of wafer to calculate.Samsung Samsung as the same as setting a dedicated production line to maintain a stable supply.
In response, Samsung decided to boost DRAM production at a new factory just started operating in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi-do, which led Samsung's semiconductor division president Kim Ki Nam at a business conference that waved his fist saying, 'To cope with market changes.' "In addition, China's factories are also constantly investing in production storage.Samsung hopes to seize the huge demand of China and the United States has launched a strategy.
4. Semiconductor Offensive and defensive (2): Big fish eat fish
'Their stock was held when Qualcomm was listed, thanks to Qualcomm's stock for their son's college,' said Timothy, a retired professor in San Diego, California, United States. At the end of 1991 Qualcomm was the communications company When the device startups went public, Timothy bought his shares for Qualcomm, a local company that rose more than 100 times in 26 years.
Qualcomm jumped to one of the top semiconductor companies in the world in the smartphone era with its patents on mobile communications Qualcomm's technicians said that it will also lead the 5G era. "Qualcomm's headquarters in San Diego have ' Patent wall 'showing more than 1,000 patents Qualcomm received in the fall of 2016 Qualcomm proposed the acquisition of NXP Semiconductors, NXP specializing in the production of automotive semiconductors, which is the weakness of Qualcomm through the acquisition, Qualcomm may further expand the hegemony But predators have become predators overnight. "Make Offer to Qualcomm," November 5, 2017 Qualcomm CEO Steve Morrenkov (Steve) Mollenkopf, age 49) was told on the phone about Hock Tan (65), who met in Taiwan two weeks ago and CEO of Broadcom, best known as' The King of Buys, A meal a year ago with Molenkov proposed the merger of the two companies.But QUALCOMM to buy NXP as a priority issue.Therefore Broadcom decided to swallow Qualcomm.At that time Chen Fuyang think, Affected by the patent dispute with Apple, Qualcomm shares weak performance, it is an excellent time for acquisitions. After being rejected by Qualcomm, and started a proxy war, there are rumors that Broadcom will increase the acquisition to confront.
'When is the first-line convergence?' The staff of American semiconductor company Freescale reluctantly said that the company was initially spun off from Motorola and was acquired by NXP at approximately 2 trillion yen by the end of 2015. Qualcomm decided in 2016 To approximately 5 trillion yen acquisition of NXP, the Broadcom is also going to spend 15 trillion yen acquisition of Qualcomm in the semiconductor industry, the public 1 trillion yen over the acquisition of the case in the last three years, there are 10 Strong food stocks with a higher market capitalization annexed the weak have continued.
In late November, two weeks after Broadcom proposed its acquisition, Marvell, the leading communications semiconductor company, announced its acquisition of Cavium at approximately 670 billion yen. Although Marvell CEO Matt Murphy (44) said that it is not " And the impact of Qualcomm ', but in the era of jungle, all companies have to find ways to survive.
5. Four applications drive the semiconductor industry Q2 began to recover
Set micro-channel news, with the stock adjustment is completed, coupled with non-brewing brewing grab market share, the semiconductor industry is expected to enter the recovery track from the second quarter of this year, is expected to include the new smart phone features, high performance computing (HPC) Internet of Things (IoT) and automotive electronics applications such as the four major leapt to the mainstream market, driving the industry growth in the next 5 years.
The semiconductor market has been in inventory adjustment since the second quarter of last year and after three quarters of adjustment period, inventory gradually returned to the seasonal average in the fourth quarter of last year. Although there is still a period of adjustment in overall mobile phone handset market this year, Season is expected to enter the recovery track.
The main reasons for the semiconductor industry to recover include:
1. This year's semiconductor stocks relative to last year's health, with the Apple iPhone prices are high, affecting the buying gas, non-brewing machine brewing grab market share.
2.iPhone shipping momentum slowed in the first quarter, so that the original tight memory, spare parts soothing, help non-Apple phone shipments.
3. The four major application areas include the new smart phone features, high-speed computing, Internet of Things and automotive electronics is expected to lead the growth.
The above four major application areas will be the focus of future growth of the electronics industry.Although the growth rate of smartphones is reduced to single digits, the functions of the mobile phones continue to increase, including applications such as 3D sensing, AI, AR / VR and 5G , Will drive the mobile phone in the semiconductor content increase.
With the deep development of data center, the demand of GPU, CPU, FPGAs and ASICs will be driven by AI chips that will infiltrate smartphones, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), blockchain, etc. In addition to driving high-end process growth, HPC also drives the rapid growth of high-end packaging such as CoWoS on the substrate.
Car networking, smart grid, smart home, smart city, etc. It is expected that the development of IoT will drive the demand of chips such as WiFi, Bluetooth, 5G, sensing etc. In terms of vehicles, autonomous driving, ADAS and electric vehicles drive the growth of automotive semiconductors, Related requirements include image sensors, automotive diodes, metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) and other specialized chips.
With the car, AI and HPC drive foundry growth.For the foundry, in terms of new features of smart phones continue to improve, and HPC rapid development, high-end processes below 7 nm is expected to maintain the growth trend; and 8-inch Fabs are benefiting from autonomous driving, electric vehicle development, automotive semiconductor growth accelerated last year, coupled with the international manufacturers continue to expand outsourcing scale, expected this year, the global 8-inch wafer fab capacity rates remain high.
6. 2018 passive components industry outlook: shortage will continue, in short supply increased
Passive components industry Since the beginning of last year MLCC market supply and demand gap, the major manufacturers after another price increases, chip resistors, aluminum capacitors and other products gradually tighten supply and demand before the end of the year, driving related vendors last year revenue and profitability performance are significantly higher. It is expected that the overall passive component market will maintain the stock shortage pattern mainly due to the cautious expansion of various manufacturers and the continuous improvement of market demand.
Since last year, the passive component items that are relatively out-of-stock are the products with relatively low unit price and technical threshold in the past. After the nightmare of overnight expansion of product quotations resulting from the substantial expansion of the manufacturers, the expansion in recent years has been quite cautious. Most of them only carry out expansion of 5-10% against niche products every year, and the industrial order is improving. This year the situation will also remain the same. There will be no worries that the supply side will launch a large number of new production capacity.
In recent years, the impact of supply and demand reform in the Mainland has also been impacted. Some of the more energy-intensive and highly-polluting industries are limited in production. For instance, the production capacity of high-power-consumption electrolytic aluminum foil is under strain. At the end of last year, Under, making some resistance manufacturers reduced production capacity.
It is expected that the implementation of relevant environmental protection policies will be more stringent this year. Therefore, under the influence of the insufficient supply of raw materials and the restrictions of some processes, the shortage of supplies will also be aggravated.
In the future, with the increase of various emerging applications and the improvement of the terminal product specifications, the demand for passive components will continue to increase. As product functions become more complicated and diversified, the power consumption will also increase accordingly. Therefore, More passive components to regulate, steady flow, filter noise, etc., in order to maintain the normal operation of the terminal device.
For example, a traditional car uses about 1,000 to 2,000 passive components. When it enters the networking car era, the estimated 5,000 to 10,000 passive components will be used. The demand will grow at double speed. Therefore, in the future of automotive electronics / Under the gradual fermentation of the trend of electric vehicles, industrial 4.0, high-standard mobile phones and cloud computing, the demand for passive components will continue to increase. The annual increase of 40% in the automotive market and the 30% increase in the annual demand in the industrial market, Increase in demand 10 ~ 15% and so on.
Overall, it is expected that the market demand for passive components will continue to grow larger than the increase in supply this year and will continue to be in short supply. The profit-taking performance of MLCCs, chip resistors and other manufacturers is still expected to improve significantly from 2017.
The solid capacitors, inductors and other products, although no more obvious out of stock, but because of its unit price, technical threshold, a higher degree of customization, the overall market demand will also benefit from the upgrade, long-term profit performance remains optimistic.