Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the seventh largest automotive manufacturing hub worldwide, produced a total of 3.5 million vehicles in 2021, exceeding the volume of 2.85 million units in 2020.
Based on DIGITIMES Research's observations on the global electric vehicle (EV) market, in contrast to the weaker-than-expected overall car sales, EV sales exhibited prominent growth in 2021.
Taiwanese manufacturers demonstrated strong ambition toward adopting ISA-95 Layer 1 and 2 manufacturing equipment automation as well as Layer 5 e-operation and product management automation.
Silicon (Si) semiconductor with widespread use is close to reaching the physical limits of Moore's Law and is thus being replaced by wide bandgap semiconductors of third-generation semiconductors in a growing number of applications.
Despite the higher costs of SiC semiconductor components compared to silicon ones, automakers still embrace them for their low power loss, high withstand voltage, heat resistance and high frequency characteristics.
Fourth-quarter 2021 smartphone shipments to the China market amounted to 80.5 million units. The volume represented a 9.5% increase from the prior quarter, driven by inventory preparation demand for the high season.
China-based smartphone brands shipped a total of 195 million phones in fourth-quarter 2021 as they aggressively ramped up shipments in the traditional high season in an attempt to make their whole-year target.
Fourth-quarter 2021 smartphone AP shipments to China-based vendors amounted to 171.2 million units, plunging 30.8% from the prior quarter mainly as China-based vendors faced the situation where some components were in worse shortage than the others, on top of weak 5G phone demand and a mismatch between AP supply and demand.
Global tablet shipments amounted to 37.13 million units in fourth-quarter 2021, up 5.4% from the prior quarter but down 20.2% from the prior year, as the tablet market continued to struggle with the IC shortage and the shipments came short of expectation in the traditional high season.
Fourth-quarter 2021 global server shipments grew 2.9% sequentially. IC and component shortages continue to haunt the server industry in the first quarter of 2022.
Taiwan's notebook shipments enjoyed better-than-expected growths in the fourth quarter of 2021, picking up over 10% sequentially, stronger than the 9% of the global average.
