While a chip shortage caused by the pandemic turned into a supply glut around the middle of last year, slowing sales sharply, global chip sales still edged up throughout 2022, reaching a record high.
The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) recently released data showing that global chip sales in 2022 increased by 3.2% from $555.9 billion in 2021 to a record $573.5 billion.
However, the chip industry encountered significant headwinds in the second half of the year, with chip sales in the fourth quarter of 2022 falling 14.7% year-on-year to $130.2 billion, 7.7% lower than sales in the third quarter of 2022. The association also said sales in December 2022 fell 4.4 percent from November to $43.4 billion.
The analysis believes that there are three reasons for the bleak industry: first, the uncertainty of the global economic outlook leads to a decline in demand; Second, chip overcapacity, excessive inventory needs to be digested; Third, the lack of innovation in electronic products such as mobile phones leads to longer intervals for people to replace their devices.
Regionally, the Americas will see the largest sales growth in 2022, reaching 16.0%. While China remained the largest chip market with $180.3 billion in sales, it was down 6.3 percent compared to 2021, and annual sales in Europe and Japan also increased, at 12.7 percent and 10.0 percent, respectively.
Sales were down in all regions in December compared to November 2022: Europe down 0.7%, Japan down 0.8%, China down 5.7% and the Americas down 6.5%.
By chip type, analog chips, which are most commonly used in automobiles, consumer goods and computers, saw the biggest increase in sales, up 7.5 percent to $89 billion. Logic chips and memory chips accounted for the largest share of sales, with global sales of $176 billion and $130 billion, respectively.
'While market cyclicality and macroeconomic conditions have led to short-term fluctuations in sales, the long-term outlook for the semiconductor market remains very strong as chips play an increasing role in making the world smarter, more efficient and more connected,' SIA CEO John Neuffer said in a statement.
In this US stock earnings season, many chip manufacturers have mentioned that rising channel inventory levels have become the biggest drag. From the financial reports of Intel, AMD and Qualcomm, it can be seen that in 2022, the two-year chip shortage caused by the new coronavirus epidemic has quickly turned into a chip surplus.
Qualcomm's earnings report this week, for example, missed analysts' estimates for fiscal first-quarter revenue and issued weak quarterly guidance. Qualcomm said that the worsening macroeconomic environment and increased channel inventory factors affected the company's performance. However, Qualcomm expects that China's recent optimization of COVID-19 prevention measures should promote consumer demand, and the situation may be better in the second half of the year.
The source and copyright of the article belong to Cailian.com. Hengshenghui is only for reprinting and sharing. It maintains neutrality on the statements and opinions in the article and does not provide any express or implied warranty on the accuracy, reliability or completeness of the content contained in the article.