According to previous reports, with the impact of inflation and the impact of factors such as the uncertain economic outlook, the demand for consumer electronics products is rapidly slowing down, and major manufacturers have also begun to adjust in response to changes in the market environment. Nvidia, AMD, and Apple all intend to revise their orders at TSMC,
reducing the number of orders or delaying accepting chips.
TrendForce said that there has been a wave of order cancellations in foundries, starting with driver ICs and TDDIs from 0.1X μm and 55 nm processes. Although the current order cancellations are mainly for consumer products, wafer foundries have begun to feel the pressure that customers may cancel orders in large numbers, and the utilization rate of production capacity has declined.
In the second half of 2022, with the adjustment of the inventory of accessories related to a large number of consumer products such as smartphones, PCs, and TVs, many companies began to reduce the number of orders. This situation covers both 8- and 12-inch fabs and occurs at mature process nodes such as 0.1X μm, 90/55 nm, and 40/28 nm, and even advanced process nodes such as 6/7 nm are not immune.
It is understood that the capacity utilization rate of 8-inch wafers (including 0.35-0.11 μm) should be the largest, mainly used to manufacture driver IC, CIS, and power-related chips, which reflects the decline in PC and TV demand. While demand from server, automotive and industrial applications increased, it was not enough to make up for the drop in utilization caused by the cancellation of consumer orders. In the second half of 2022, the overall capacity utilization rate of 8-inch fabs will be between 90% and 95%. If the proportion of consumer products is high, it will take a lot of effort to maintain it at 90%.
12-inch wafers with mature process nodes have the same problem. The overall capacity utilization rate is about 95%. However, compared with the easy 100% in the past two years, resource allocation has become more balanced now. Coupled with plans to announce a number of new products, TrendForce believes that the 7/6nm capacity utilization rate will decline marginally to 95~99% in 2H22 due to product mix conversion, while 5/4nm processes will remain near full load, driven by several new products.
