What's even more serious is that under the current tight production capacity of upstream wafers, the insufficiency of supply capacity will only protect the customers, and it will be difficult for small and medium-sized customers to get orders. The pressure for survival is very high. The entire power device market will begin to shuffle. ” Many small manufacturers in China, especially in South China, are accelerating.
8-inch wafer shortage single chip rose to 300 yuan, 12-inch production line can not ease
Since last year, power devices have been out of stock one after another. The supply of 8-inch wafers has been in short supply, and the market demand has been strong. This has caused upstream price surges. This year, power devices such as MOSFETs and IGBTs continue to be out of stock, and the delivery trend has been increasing. Presented a fully extended situation, some of the MOSFETs were delivered for more than 40 weeks, and even out of stock.
The upstream source told reporters at Jiwei.com that the price of MOSFETs and IGBTs has increased by more than 40% since last year, and the overall price increase for 8-inch wafers has approached 30%. The price of single 8-inch wafers was 200 yuan. Monolithic prices have now risen to 300 yuan, so price increases for power devices such as MOSFETs and IGBTs are more indicative of price transfers. The demand for 8-inch wafers is in short supply.
Then the 8-inch production line can not meet the 12-inch production line capacity to solve the problem? The above sources said that in the power device, the current 12-inch production line production is very low probability, because it will involve the problem of the industry chain, and Power devices may involve backside processing and packaging related issues. The possibility of solving problems in a 12-inch production line is not significant in the short term. Now, power devices are mainly concentrated on 6-inch and 8-inch capacity, and 8-inch capacity is more cost-effective. High, 6 inch is mainly to do the traditional high voltage mode power device.
More importantly, the 8-inch production line is now scarce. It is difficult to quickly build 8-inch production lines in the short term. Industry insiders say that the world's largest equipment manufacturers have gone to 12-inch devices, and 8-inch devices have basically stopped production. Domestic 8-inch production line can only buy second-hand 8-inch line equipment, but now there are not many used equipment, only a foreign company can open a domestic manufacturer.
However, the 8-inch production line is not necessarily available now. According to industry sources, under the current market conditions, the cost of building a new 8-inch production line is too high. Now it costs RMB 3-3.5 billion to build 8-inch lines. But in the off-season, it may have cost less than 2 billion yuan to build 8 inches. Now the price-to-output ratio is too low.
So, now, the feasibility of investing in an 8-inch production line to solve the production capacity problem is not very big. Like the newly-opened production line pulling equipment up, including the steady increase in production capacity, there is a lot of uncertainty. It is difficult to solve the problem of time productivity.
A power device agent in Shenzhen also told reporters that although Silan Microelectronics, Yandong, and SMIC’s 8-inch production lines have all been put into production, the impact on the supply and demand of the market will not be great, so from the end market, the current The price of power devices is still very strong.
In fact, people in the industry basically believe that the current price of power devices is also reasonable. Previously, the power device market was fiercely competitive, and quoting prices to customers was basically 5-10% year-on-year. The situation of low prices is not reasonable for the semiconductor industry. The upstream manufacturer stated that the price of wafers has stabilized, and that it is of little significance to increase prices. Now that it has risen to the upper limit of the reasonable range, the future trend of power devices remains steady under the tight supply market. There is a rise.
Huge gap, consumption of consumer electronics is better than ever
'Any industry has such a key incentive for this, just look at the process to see what causes this change.' For the current status of power devices that are continuously out of stock prices, a Shanghai-based original VP told Jiji.com. Mainly due to the rapid rise of the new energy auto market, the demand gap is huge. Even if the industry leader Infineon supplies all its production capacity to automotive electronics, it is far from enough.
From the current global power semiconductor market pattern, it is basically occupied by Infineon, ON Semiconductor and other international giants. According to data released by Leqing think tank, Infineon’s market share of power MOSFETs reached 26.4%, occupying the first place. Position, second place is ON Semiconductor.
The aforementioned VP indicated that due to the lucrative high-end market for automotive electronics, Infineon will inevitably give up part of the low-end production capacity. Of course, this is achieved through continuous iterations. Infineon will first give up some of the mid-end consumer production capacity. At the low end, they gave up a wave. In this case, there will be a huge gap in the consumer electronics market. Coupled with the transmission effect of the big manufacturers, the price increase of power devices will quickly spread.
Yuanda Investment Consultant also analyzed that during the analysis of this round of MOSFET market, Infineon, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, Renesas and other major international companies have turned to high-margin industrial applications. High-end automotive products are used for fading out. MOSFETs for consumer electronics products such as PCs and cell phones.
In the consumer electronics market, with more and more mobile phones, more and more complex applications, more and more power devices are required. The above VP revealed that, with the MOSFET application as an example, the fast charge current of mobile phones is increasing. The larger the capacity is, the more it consumes. The original MOSFET chip was a piece of 8-inch wafer with about 40,000 MOSFETs. Now that the fast-charge current is getting larger, only one wafer can make about 5,000 MOSFETs.
In this way, the production capacity of wafer-wasting in the low-end market such as consumer electronics will be even more severe, and the capacity shortage of wafers will also be highlighted. Together with the high profits of the new energy market, the international giants will forego some of the low-end consumer products. market.
In addition, there is a large demand for MOSFETs in the fast-paced wireless charging market. 4-6 MOSFETs are used in a wireless charger. It is conceivable that tens of millions of wireless chargers are required for MOSFETs. How big is, but at this stage, the wireless charging market is still a process of growth, and the demand will gradually increase. In addition, the fast charging power is increasing, and the low-voltage and high-current modes gradually become dominant, which will also involve the upgrading of MOSFETs. , Consumed capacity is even better than ever.
Small domestic manufacturers are facing closures and the industry begins to reshuffle
With the continuous tight production capacity of upstream wafers, international giants such as Infineon have turned to high-end new energy markets. The consumption of power devices in mid-to-low-end markets is even more successful than ever before. On the one hand, they are indeed brought to the domestic power device manufacturers. The opportunity came, but it also brought confusion.
The power device manufacturer indicated to JiWei.com that its implementation is already very expensive for power devices such as MOSFETs and IGBTs. For the current situation, the dilemma is that even if the price goes up again, it will be difficult to deliver the goods and it will rise again. The significance of price is not significant. Of course, from the point of view of profit, of course, the higher the better.
According to another industry source, many original manufacturers are afraid to offer their customers free quotes because they fear that if the price of the newspaper is accepted by the customer, it will be more troublesome if the price is not delivered. If the price increase can be used for shipping, that would be okay. Now the key is a lot of the original factory can not be shipped.
However, from the agent's point of view, it will still report high prices to customers and continue to drive higher market prices for power devices. In addition, prices in spot markets such as Shenzhen Huaqiangbei are even more outrageous, and the possibility of upward adjustment of prices every day All exist. But to a certain degree of market, these power devices become valuable and have no market.
'We are now paying attention to the changes in market conditions, and on the other hand, we are still considering how to solve the problem of capacity. This is the top priority. 'The VP said that the production capacity will continue to be tight, there are no signs of easing, but the price If we go up, we will deviate from the value curve, and the price increase will not be significant, because we must consider the relationship between customers and we cannot go very far.
As a result, orders for MOSFETs or IGBTs such as silicon silicom, new tang, etc. have already been claimed at the end of the year under the current situation where the upstream wafers have not been relieved of tension. Prior to this, it was reported that MOS, NTD, etc. Season has been determined to increase prices, including 6-inch foundry prices rose by 10 to 20%, 8-inch wafer foundry prices have also risen 5 to 10%.
According to industry insiders, there is still a large probability of such price fluctuations. Currently, CR Microelectronics adopts the mode of bidding price increase. In the case of a market that is still out of stock, the price is 5-10% per month. Price increases, but the overall number is limited.
Under the current situation, where the supply capacity exceeds the demand for supply due to the shortage of supply capacity, the VP stated that the supply capacity that exceeds supply will only protect the customers, and it will be very difficult for small and medium-sized customers to get orders. The pressure for survival is very high. The entire power device market also follows suit. Since the beginning of 'reshuffle', small and medium-sized manufacturers of power devices in China, especially in South China, have been accelerating and have exerted a great influence on the downstream market.
On the one hand, once the downstream manufacturers were shuffled, some small power device manufacturers could not play, they could not get their own wafers, and the profits were low. One wave of price increases was dragged to death; on the other hand, From a positive perspective, we will make everyone pay more attention to product quality and pay more attention to the brand. What's worse, it will increase the burden on the downstream machine manufacturers. Because the profit of the whole machine is very low, it will quickly grow in the short term. The cost.
The same is true. Nowadays, many small factories in South China, such as Shenzhen, are getting more and more sad. The first is that the supply chain is incomplete, and the second is that there is no price advantage. Because wafers are not available, low-end customers do not move, and end customers are also Can not maintain, so there will be a number of small companies have closed down, the entire power devices, especially MOSFET manufacturers will open the reshuffle situation.
However, in the long run, the entire domestic power device market will undergo an unordered to orderly transition. Smaller manufacturers will disappear or merge with them, and the degree of integration will become higher and higher. This is also a good thing for the industry. In the end, the players who will make more achievements will be able to manage and control the entire resources and materials within a reasonable range. This kind of agglomeration effect will grow stronger in the future.
It is worth emphasizing that, from the current point of view, the trend of price increase for the entire power device will remain strong in the next 2-3 years, because the newly opened 8-inch production line can not basically meet the existing huge gap, and it will start to increase this year. The 8-inch production line has to wait two years before entering the mass production phase. More critically, the equipment is not necessarily available today. This means that in the next 2-3 years, the entire power device market will continue to be popular. The overall price has risen steadily.