Many industry sectors have been hit hard by COVID, but electronics and peripheral service industries have been thriving. According to Taiwan Stock Exchange, there were 395 IT companies listed on the main board, and another 406 IT companies on the over-the-counter market as of the end of 2021 - or a total of 801 publicly listed IT companies. From the financial reports released by these companies, you can track the latest dynamics of the industry. DIGITIMES has come up with statistics of total revenue of US$939.9 billion contributed by all publicly listed IT companies in 2021 with an annual growth of 18.2%. The most outstanding firms are those from the semiconductor sector, elevating output of US$125.3 billion in 2020 to US$166.9 billion in 2021 with a remarkable growth rate of 33.1% due to the surging demand from the EV and notebook markets, the G2 tensions and the supply-chain disruption. The overall contribution of semiconductors to the revenue of the entire IT industry has been lifted from 15.8% in 2020 to 17.8% in 2021.
Taiwan is a semiconductor manufacturing powerhouse, but it relies heavily on foreign equipment suppliers. Now the country's president has vowed to improve Taiwan's semiconductor equipment self-sufficiency. A recent power outage hitting Hua Hong Semiconductor's fab in China may further constrain IC supply and help push up manufacturing service quotes at 8-inch fabs. And PC processor prices are also set to rise in 2022, thanks to rising production costs.
The manufacturing of semiconductors using EUV process produces a lot of carbon dioxide, but TSMC is striving to reduce such carbon emissions. Suppliers of networking chips are adopting QFN for packaging amid shortages of substrates for flip-chip production. FII has identified metaverse, EV and semiconductor as three areas for its business development.
Comments of business leaders in the ICT industry are important sources for news stories. DIGITIMES sees such news stories as enrichments to our database. DIGITIMES has keen interest in Macronix's IDM business model, and ASE's capability of maintaining leadership in packaging and testing. We are much interested in their unique views of the industry.
Based on the recent report from SIA, the China semiconductor industry grew 30.6% in 2020. If the growth rate continues, by 2030, it will become a world champion in the semiconductor industry. TSMC then continues to surge in the foundry sector and surpass other competitors in the world. In 2022, it expects to grow 29% in sales revenue. Many Taiwan semiconductor companies also expressed high interest in automobile chips and welcome more cooperation with mainstream carmakers.
Robust chip demand for HPC device applications, as well as demand for automotive and smartphone chips, will buoy TSMC's sales performance during the quarter. TSMC expects its first-quarter 2022 sales to grow 7.4% sequentially. TSMC house reportedly has plans to dedicate fab facilities to making 3nm chips for Intel. In China, semiconductor backend services providers plan to cut prices for MCU packaging in the first half of 2022 in order to boost orders from clients.
As one of Taiwan's major integrated device manufacturers (IDM), Macronix shoulders the responsibility of Taiwan's future role in the memory industry. Miin Wu, chairman of Macronix, stressed in a recent forum that Macronix has been focused on quality since its inception. Macronix's product quality is superior to competitors' and it is especially so in high-end NOR flash. Wu stressed again that the future memory products will be a customized sector, and the application-driven technology will be the key to success. Solutions which are merged into the "system in memory" would strengthen customers' competitiveness. Etron chairman Nicky Lu, who has been in the memory business for years, also said that if you expect the memory sector to achieve a satisfactory outcome, you should take the packaging and testing industry into account. TSMC chairman Mark Liu also believes that Micron has surpassed Samsung in memory technology. Taiwan should not miss the opportunity, with Micron having a production base in central Taiwan.
Major South Korean companies Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are shifting their focus from hardware and functionality toward improving the customer experience (CX). The young leaders of these companies are conducting a value revolution.
Multiple films have featured how intelligent machines might disobey orders from humans and eventually take over the world. In the opinion of Stuart Russell, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, the scenarios could become a reality. But he also said the situation is fixable if we fundamentally change how we build artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Demand from notebook clients may still be strong, but ODMs have seen difficulties managing their component inventories. Their overall component inventory has been rising, thanks to shipping problems and shortages of some components that have been crippling thier notebook shipments. NOR flash bit demand is expected to continue rising in 2022, but supply will remain tight, thanks to limited growth in output from NOR flash suppliers. The battery is most important to electric vehicles, and carmakers are striving to improve self-sufficiency of batteries as they eye the EV market.
MediaTek's chairman Ming-Kai Tsai recently elucidated his views on the metaverse business opportunity that has become a hot topic these days. Metaverse ignites a new business opportunity with diverse changes and infinite extensions. From the physical perspective of "contact," we can imagine the continuous development of AR/VR/MR related devices. The metaverse infrastructure that supports various devices as well as the huge data centers that features high-performance computing power and data storage are all indispensable. These are the physical business opportunities of the metaverse.
A personal assistant that knows the best time to wake you up. A machine that reads radiology scans together with a pathologist. More and more artificial intelligence (AI) applications have become a reality or are on their way. Daniela Rus, director of MIT's CSAIL (computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory), said the technology has also created challenges. If we can handle them well, AI will improve our lives significantly.
With the electric vehicle (EV) market continuing to grow, carmakers in Europe and the US have been building battery plants or partnering with battery manufacturers domestically. The shared goal is clear - becoming self-sufficient in electric vehicle batteries to fulfill the future demand for EVs.
Founded in 1997, MediaTek originated from the UMC Group which was founded in the 1980s. The management team has witnessed the wonderful era "from micrometer to sub-microns" in Taiwan. In view of the future of Taiwan's IC design industry, MediaTek's chairman Ming-Kai Tsai, who is usually cautious in his speech, generously shared his insights and elucidated transformation of industrial structure and evolution of technologies recently.
Strong demand for foundry services is expected to boost TSMC's 2022 sales, but its profits for this year may be dented by rising materials costs. Inventec saw notebook shipments drop in December, but strong server shipments still managed to buoy its overall sales for the month. Distributors of ICs and materials remain upbeat about server demand in 2022, expecting robust orders from US cloud service providers.
Algorithms are changing our lives in different ways. However, Cathy O'Neil, founder of O'Neil risk consulting and algorithmic auditing, said in some cases, the mathematical models are embedded with opinions and potentially become "weapons" that cause harm.
