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.
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.
Shipments of application processors (APs) used in smartphones released by China-based brands went up 10.2% sequentially, but down 19.4% on year to reach 199.5 million units in the third quarter of 2022.
Soaring silicon carbide (SiC) demand from electric vehicles (EV) is leading to a tight supply of 6-inch SiC wafers, of which the cost will unlikely go down.
The four leading Taiwan-based foundries - TSMC, UMC, PSMC and VIS - together are on course to generate revenues exceeding US$90 billion in 2022, soaring 31.8% from a year ago.
According to Digitimes Research's surveys and analyses, second-quarter 2022 smartphone application processor (AP) shipments to China-based vendors amounted to 181 million units, increasing 1.7% from the prior quarter but decreasing 17.1% from the prior year mainly due to China's weakening economy as well as the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and rising inflation continuingly taking a toll on consumer spending.
The global wafer foundry industry embraced brisk market demand and raked in a total of exceeding US$100 billion in 2021 revenues, representing an on-year growth of 26%.
DIGITIMES Research believes Intel investing in advanced process technologies and restarting the foundry services business are strategies that are able to complement each other.
According to Digitimes Research's surveys and analyses, first-quarter 2022 smartphone application processor (AP) shipments to China-based vendors amounted to 178 million units, increasing 4% from the prior quarter but decreasing 16% from the prior year as Xiaomi, Oppo and Transsion ramped up inventory with their efforts to expand into Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America generating results.
The top-4 Taiwan-based foundries - TSMC, UMC, PSMC and VIS - together generated an aggregated total revenue of US$19 billion in fourth-quarter 2021, up 6% from a quarter ago, taking their combined whole-year 2021 revenue to top US$68 billion, up 26% from a year ago.
