When the production capacity of the mature wafer foundry process is reported to be loose, international automotive chip manufacturers have recently come to Taiwan University to grab production capacity, including the leading Infineon, the second brother NXP, Texas Instruments, Microchip and other automotive chips ” “The Four Heavenly Kings” all approached UMC to increase film production, and shouted that “all the production capacity will be collected”, pushing up UMC’s capacity utilization rate to continue to be fully loaded, and the popularity will continue until the end of the year.
According to industry analysis, the registration of the “four kings” of automotive chips will not only keep UMC’s production capacity fully loaded, but also make up for the decline of other chip market conditions in a timely manner, but also effectively alleviate the shortage of automotive chips that has plagued automakers for a long time.
It was also reported in the industry that although UMC encountered weaker demand from some customers and demanded to reduce film production, UMC unexpectedly did not ask for intentional lowering of production due to the commitment of major automotive customers to “receive as much capacity as possible”. Customers with a large amount of film forced to take the goods, but privately informed that “if you want to correct the amount of film production, please take the initiative to inform”, so that the internal capacity can be quickly freed up to take orders from automotive customers to meet their needs.
UMC has never commented on customers and orders, emphasizing that the demand in the automotive market is still very strong. Not only has the capacity utilization rate exceeded 100% this quarter, the supply will continue to exceed demand, and it is expected that the production capacity will maintain such a hot situation by the end of this year.
The legal person pointed out that automotive chips have been in short supply in the past two years, and the delivery time has started at least ten months. This has led to chaos in the global auto market, which has caused the United States and the European Union to attach great importance to it. They have repeatedly asked indicator suppliers to discuss countermeasures.
As automotive chips are mostly produced in mature processes, the demand for driver ICs and some analog ICs has weakened recently, and there has been a wave of slashing orders, resulting in vacancies in the mature process capacity of wafer foundries. Grab productivity.
It is understood that this time, including Infineon, NXP, Texas Instruments, Microchip Technology and other automotive chips “four kings” have all come to UMC to increase the amount of film production. According to preliminary estimates by the industry, these four customers account for more than 30% of the global automotive chip market.
From the perspective of major international manufacturers, Infineon previously pointed out that, including unconfirmed orders, the backlog of orders in the first quarter of this year increased by 19.4% from 31 billion euros in the previous quarter to 37 billion euros, of which more than 50% are automotive For related products, the backlog of orders is clearly far beyond Infineon’s delivery capacity.
NXP CEO Kurt Sievers also said that the company’s expectations for strong growth in 2022 are being realized, customer demand remains strong, and overall, market demand remains greater than supply, and inventory remains low across all end markets.
