Taiwan-based MOSFET suppliers and related backend service providers are positive about their business outlook for the first half of 2019 thanks to increasing inquiries from international IDMs and a healthy supply and demand situation in the industry, according to market sources.
A number of IDMs have reportedly approached Taiwan-based MOSFET suppliers in order to secure supply contracts for the power chips, a scenario which had not been seen over the past 20 years, according to Charlie Wu, president of Excelliance MOS, a MOSFET and power management IC designer.
With the automotive electronics market now accounting for 40% of MOSFET applications, the leading IDMs such as Infineon are likely to continue to focus on development of high-voltage automotive MOSFETs, while outsourcing medium- and low-voltage MOSFETs to Taiwan's IC design houses, Wu said.
Automotive MOSFET chips are likely to account for 22% of global shipments of MOSFETs in 2022, higher than a total of 19% shipped to the logic, computing and storage sectors, Wu indicated, citing data market research firms.
Excelliance MOS expects its sales to remain brisk in the fourth quarter of 2018, reaching the same level of NT$394 million (US$12.75 million) recorded in the previous quarter. For the first three quarters of 2018 revenues totaled NT$1.072 billion, up 49.4% on year.
Fellow company Sinopower Semiconductor posted revenues of NT$704 million in the third quarter, up 20% on year. For the January-September period, Sinopower saw its revenues increase 34.4% on year to NT$1.877 billion.
To cope with increasing demand, MOSFET backend service provider GEM Services plans to ramp up the capacities at its plants in Hefei to 30 million units a month and that in Shanghai to 360-380 million units, according to company sources.
GEM post revenues of NT$288.92 million in October, up 0.91% on month and 5.35% on year. Year-to-date, revenues totaled NT$2.835 billion, increasing 12.55% on year. GEM expects its revenues to continue to grow at a high single digit in 2019.
Automotive electronics market becoming a lucrative segment for MOSFETs
Photo: Shihmin Fu, Digitimes, November 2018
Article translated by Steve Shen
