Application processor (AP) shipments to China-based smartphone vendors amounted to 137 million units in the fourth quarter of 2022, down 24% sequentially and 20.3% on year, and will experience another double-digit decline in the first quarter of 2023.

Taiwan makers' combined notebook shipments in the fourth quarter of 2022 were weaker than DIGITIMES Research had anticipated, dropping 16% sequentially, slightly higher than that of the global total, and down over 40% on year.

China-based smartphone vendors shipped a total of 150 million smartphones in fourth-quarter 2022, growing 6.6% from a quarter ago but plunging 21.4% from a year ago and the volumes are expected to continue to slide from a year ago in the first quarter of 2023.

Fourth-quarter 2022 global server shipments declined 7.1% from the prior quarter and 4.3% from the prior year and the volumes are expected to decline further by over 10% both on-quarterly and on-yearly in the first quarter of 2023

Third-quarter and fourth-quarter 2022 global smartphone shipments are expected to have come to 277 million units and 311 million units, respectively.

Taiwan-based manufacturers' combined 2022 server-related revenue is estimated to have grown nearly 16% to amount to NT$2.12 trillion, but in 2023, the amount will rise only 6.4% amid the weak global economy.

Amid a weak global economy, server brands and China-based server vendors will only have limited shipment growth in 2023 while cloud services providers will expand their data centers on a smaller scale compared to 2022.

Smartphone shipments to the China market amounted to 58.4 million units in the third quarter of 2022, falling 20.5% from a year ago to a new low since third-quarter 2020.

Global top-5 notebook brands, excluding Apple, saw their combined shipments slip 6% on month and close to 50% on year in November.

Logic IC manufacturing process technologies have been making rapid advances with lithography technologies and machines, transistor architecture and power delivery network (PDN) design all playing vital roles in driving the advance.

US government's Export Administration Regulations (EAR) are expected to set back China's progress in AI and supercomputer research and weaken its technological and military strength which otherwise could be empowered by its semiconductor advances.

Global foundry revenue is set to reach US$137.2 billion in 2022, soaring 25.8%, and the brilliant performance is a result of price hikes, customer long-term agreements (LTA) and capacity expansions.