Taiwan tech firms have made considerable achievements in the EV sector, having entered the supply chain of Tesla. But as the car market is still dominated by traditional marques who are now also keen to continue the market of future cars, Taiwan tech firms face quite some hurdles to entering the supply chains of these major car vendors. With the easing of the pandemic possibly slowing demand for devices supporting stay-at-home needs, chip vendors are now said to be expecting Chromebook shipments to grow at a slower pace in 2021. Corning has announced a moderate price hike to its display glass substrates in third-quarter 2021 to reflect rising production costs.
The ongoing shortages of power management chips and display driver ICs will constrain notebook ODMs' shipment growth to just single digits sequentially in the second quarter, according to industry sources.
North America-based manufacturers of semiconductor equipment posted US$3.59 billion in billings worldwide in May 2021 (three-month average basis), logging a record high for the fifth consecutive month, according to SEMI.
The supply of BT substrates is likely to fall short of demand in the second half of this year, but the shortage will be less severe than that of ABF substrates, according to industry sources.
Taiwan-based chipmakers have seen their order visibility for handset-use LCD driver ICs and fast-charging solutions become clear for third-quarter 2021, thanks to robust handset sales during the 618 online shopping festival in China.
PCB makers remain upbeat about demand for notebooks in the third quarter of 2021, but are unsure whether demand will stay brisk in the fourth quarter, according to industry sources.
Some networking device makers, including Wistron NeWeb and Arcadyan Technology, have said the shortages of some parts and components currently affecting the production of networking devices may ease a bit in third quarter 2021.
TSMC will give supply priorities to orders for automotive ICs and those placed by Apple in the third quarter of 2021, followed by chip orders for PCs, servers and networking devices, according to sources at fabless chipmakers.
Construction of TSMC's fab in Arizona is on track to move in equipment as ealy as mid-2022, and equipment suppliers are aleady sending teams of engineers to the US state to assist the pure-play foundry's 5nm fab project. In China, its top-3 pure-play foundries have seen significant business growth despite COVID-19 and US-China tensions, according to Digitimes Research. RISC-V is seeing strong growth. Digitimes recently talked to RISC-V International CTO Mark Himelstein and Andes Technology CEO Frankwell Lin about the prospects of the open-source platform.
China's smartphone demand failed to gain as much momentum as expected during the Labor Day holidays, resulting in declines in smartphone component shipments in the second quarter, but related orders from Apple will begin to increase in the second half, according to sources from IC distributors.
CCL demand for 5G base station applications in the US and Europe are not expected to take off until 2022 at the earliest, according to industry sources.
