When Will the Mainland IC Rank Be No Longer Concerned with "Others"?

ICInsights, a market research agency, recently announced the 2011 global IC sales rankings. North America topped the list with 53.2% of the world's total. South Korea, Japan, Europe, and China Taiwan sequentially took second place in the rankings. Five, ranked sixth, is a familiar and unfamiliar face, called "Mainland China and others," accounting for only 1.6% of global IC sales.

From an optimist's point of view, it has been extremely difficult for China's IC industry to reach the list after experiencing the rapid growth of the “Golden 10 Years”; in the eyes of pessimists, even after experiencing a “golden 10 year” period, our semiconductors The industry is still in the position of “Sun Shan” and is only slightly better than the “other”. Some people may think that ICInsights' statistical data does not include foundry companies. One of the highlights of the semiconductor industry in mainland China in the past 10 years has been to build a competitive foundry industry from nothing. Well, we might as well list ourselves again: The fifth-ranked global foundry is undoubtedly "SMIC and others."

In 2011, the performance of our neighbor, South Korea, was worthy of worldwide respect. In this year, they surpassed Japan for the first time to become the “first officer” of the world’s semiconductor industry; competition in the field of memory has almost become the “civil war” of South Korea; in the field of foundry, Samsung also The growth rate of over 60% has risen to the fourth place, leaving SMIC behind. In terms of advanced technology, South Korean companies have also shocked the industry. Hynix even announced that the 15nm NAND Flash technology has matured and is expected to drop in 2012. Half a year into mass production.

In the face of the gap, we may wish to take a look at Linyuan’s squid and see where their opportunities lie. In the areas of CPU, memory, and high-end wafer foundry, companies such as the United States and South Korea have formed an "oligarchic rule," and it will be difficult to shake up the existing pattern within a short period of time. Chinese IC manufacturing companies must focus only on market segments and footholds. In the mature process, the use of "geographical advantages" to make up for the lack of "time".

According to reports, Hua Hong NEC, which specializes in smart cards, analog ICs, and power devices, has achieved good results in 2011. Both sales revenue and net profit have broken the company's historical record. Although we have called for "UltraMoore's Law" for many years, because the market capacity of single products in analog ICs, power semiconductors, etc. cannot be compared with CPUs, DRAMs, or mobile terminal processors, these products are in the entire semiconductor family. Relatively "marginalized" status. In fact, these areas have a relatively high gross profit margin in the semiconductor industry and have not yet formed a market monopoly. This leaves China's semiconductor companies, both design companies and foundries, with room for survival and development. Taking the analog IC as an example, although the industry leader, TI, acquired another national company, National Semiconductor, in 2011, its share in the global market has still not reached 20%. Hua Hong NEC, China Resources Shanghua and other companies can achieve a good performance, but also did not benefit from this kind of "arbitrary separatist" market competition.

In recent years, power devices are also another hot spot for Chinese semiconductor companies to invest in. In addition to Hua Hong NEC and China Resources Shanghua, two OEM companies are strengthening their own IGBT technology platforms, Zhuzhou CSR and Jilin Huawei One South and North. The companies announced that they will build an 8-inch production line for the manufacture of new power semiconductor devices. Worthy of causing Chinese companies to pay attention to is that SiC, GaN and other wide bandgap semiconductor products have become a hot spot in the field of foreign power devices, which is China's semiconductor companies in the field of power devices to achieve leapfrog development opportunities.

We look forward to the fact that China, the world's second-largest economy, should not join the “others” in the future ranking of the semiconductor industry.