STMicroelectronics MCU shortage in the first half of the year has not improved

At the beginning of this year, NXP, the leader in automotive electronic chips, opened this year's global microcontroller chip to increase its position. It announced that it will increase its quotation for multiple product lines from the previous quarter, with MCU up 6%. May be out of stock for a whole year.

Since the beginning of 2017 (2017), the delivery time of many MCU manufacturers has been extended from four months to six months. The Japanese MCU factory is even more rare for nine months. According to Taiwan media reports, STMicroelectronics reported a surge in demand for automotive electronics in the second half of last year, and the shortage of products was serious. Others include: IDM plants such as Texas Instruments, Renesas, and NXP have the same situation, and delivery time is deferred. From 3 months to half a year, many downstream customers transferred to Taiwan, and Xintang benefited.

ST's out-of-stock products include 8-bit MCUs, Cortex M0/M3/M4, etc., and the situation has not improved in the first quarter of this year. The industry believes that it is difficult to improve in the first half of this year. In addition, Taiwan media pointed out that in 2018, Apple's new iPhone will be fully introduced into 3D sensing. STMicroelectronics is the supplier and the IDM factory is bound to continue to squeeze out the capacity of MCU.

According to market semiconductor intelligence data, most of the global electronics manufacturing operations last year were quite prosperous. Even Japanese semiconductor factories have seen their growth for many years, driving the sales of electronic components such as IC chips. It is estimated that the global demand for automotive electronics and IoT applications will continue to grow and continue to grow. Under the full capacity of the fab, the global MCU market will continue to face supply shortages in 2018.

Liu Qing, a senior analyst at IHS Markit, said that some manufacturers and upstream Fabs (manufacturing plants) have begun to increase product supply capacity in the second half of 2017, but this still takes two or three quarters to completely release these new capacity. The tight supply situation is expected to continue into the first half of 2018.