ST MCUs were out of stock in the first half of the year and did not improve

Earlier this year, NXP, the leader in auto electronic chips, opened this year's global microcontroller chip rally, announced that it will start in the previous quarter to increase the price of its many product lines across the line, including MCU increased by 6%, the market is expected to be out of stock for a whole year.

Since last (2017), shipments from a number of MCU manufacturers around the world have been extended from four months to six months, with the Japanese MCU plant having been more rare for up to nine months. According to Taiwan media reports, ST in the second half of last year out of the car electronic demand increased significantly, product shortage situation is serious, other including: Deyi, Renesas, NXP and other IDM plants also appear the same situation, delivery delay of 3 months to half a year time, many downstream customers to Taiwan factory, Xintang and other benefits.

ST's out-of-stock products, including 8-bit MCUs, Cortex M0/M3/M4 and other delivery periods, have not improved in the first quarter so far, the industry believes that the first half of this year is difficult to improve. In addition, Taiwan media pointed out that in 2018 Apple's new iPhone will be fully imported into 3D sensing, ST is a few suppliers and IDM plant, is bound to continue to crowd out MCU's capacity.

According to market semiconductor intelligence data, the global electronics manufacturing operations last year were mostly quite popular, even Japanese semiconductor factories have not seen positive growth for many years, driving up sales of electronic components such as IC chips. The global MCU market is expected to continue to face supply shortages throughout the year 2018, with the global demand for automotive electronics and Internet of Things applications continuing to explode and grow, and the production capacity of the fabs at full capacity.

Liu Qing, senior analyst at IHS Markit, said some manufacturers and upstream Fabs had already started to increase their supply capacity in the second half of 2017, but that it would still take two or three quarters for these new capacity to be fully released, so tight supply was expected to continue into the first half of 2018.