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.
Hybrid bonding and other new advanced assembly techniques widely used for smartphone application processors (AP) and high-performance computing (HPC) chips will continue to expand advanced packaging technologies.
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.
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.
Digitimes Research believes 2021 were a fruitful year for the global foundry industry thanks to strong order momentum and is optimistic about its outlook going into 2022.
Thanks to ongoing strong chip demand, the top-3 Taiwan-based foundries - TSMC, UMC and VIS - performed outstandingly in second-quarter 2021 and will see revenue climb further in the third quarter.
