The imbalance between supply and demand in the chip market continues. Some factories or production lines of Ford, Toyota and other auto companies have successively reduced or even ceased production.
Not only OEMs, but also companies in the entire automotive chip industry chain such as foundries, automotive chip OEMs, OEM chip authorized agents, distributors, etc., have all suffered from "core shortage" in the past year. , Is still dealing with challenges such as "difficulties in order placement" and "continuous price increases".
"The price increase of Samsung chips this year is 10-20%." Due to the increase in costs of raw materials, manpower, and transportation, some chip manufacturers have increased their prices, but the price increase is relatively limited. And some chip original authorized dealers also reported that since the original factory has strict regulations and regular spot checks, they will abide by the original price system and dare not increase the price indiscriminately.
Since the epidemic has affected the operating rate of chip equipment, there is a shortage of chips in the market, and some people have hoarded goods or deliberately raised prices, which affected the healthy development of the automotive industry. Relevant departments intervened to rectify the phenomenon such as price hikes, which is a good thing for the auto industry.
According to feedback from many car companies, the price of some chips has generally risen by 5 to 20 times. Nevertheless, it is still "hard to find a core."
Research organization IHS Markit said that the number of car production cuts due to chip shortages in the first quarter of this year amounted to 672,000 units, and the production cut in the second quarter was about 1.3 million units. And AlixPartners predicts that automakers will lose 110 billion U.S. dollars in revenue (about 714.5 billion yuan) in 2021, and at the same time, the total net vehicle production in 2021 will be reduced by 3.9 million vehicles.
The surge in demand after the epidemic has combined with short-term imbalances in the supply chain, resulting in a large-scale shortage of semiconductor production capacity. The price pressure of upstream foundry packaging and testing materials and other links is transmitted to the original car chip factory, and the price increase letter continues. The addition of traders and logistics providers who are keen on "business opportunities" adds a bit more to the "complexity" of this market.
With the gap reaching one-third of the capacity imbalance, global chip shortages have gradually spread from some links such as foundry, packaging and testing to the entire industry chain, involving automobiles, mobile phones, laptops, and even smart home appliances. field. For the automotive industry, the shortage of chips is mainly the 8-bit function MCU used in the electronic stability control system (ESP) and the electronic control module (ECU).
MCU is a micro-control unit, also known as a single-chip microcomputer or a single-chip microcomputer. According to the number of data bits of the processor, MCU can be divided into 4 bits, 8 bits, 16 bits, and 32 bits. The higher the number of bits, the stronger the computing power of the MCU, the larger the storage space it supports, and the higher the performance.
MUC's products are widely used in various IoT terminal fields. As the core component of the IoT, the value of MCU accounts for 35% to 45% of the IoT terminal modules. In automobiles, MCU chips are mainly used for body control. Including various control systems such as engines, electric motors, and lights.
As early as the second half of last year, international MCU chip manufacturers experienced full-line delays, which also led to a full-line increase in product prices.
According to the data of an electronic component trading platform in November 2020, the price of ST Microcontrollers has increased by about 2 to 3 times, and the delivery period has been extended to 24 to 30 weeks, while the delivery period of the automotive electronics supplier Renesas Electronics MCU is 16 For more than a week, the factory is basically in an overloaded operation state, and NXP's MCU continues to be tight, and the futures card has been stuck for more than 18 weeks.
The price of some special micro-control units (MCU) last year was US$8 each, but currently it has soared to US$50, which is more than 6 times that of last year. Since the (safety) inventory has bottomed out, even if the current purchases continue to place orders regardless of the price, the required quantity cannot be guaranteed. "There are many cases where general-purpose MCUs have risen from a few cents to a few dollars. The current market price is generally 8 to 10 times higher, and everyone is under pressure." At present, the overall MCU market in China accounts for about one-third of the global market. , The market size in 2021 will be 20 billion U.S. dollars, and next year it will reach 25 billion U.S. dollars.
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