Earlier this year, NXP, the leader in automotive electronic chips, announced that this year ’s global microcontroller chip prices will increase by the front gun, announcing that it will increase the full line of its multiple product lines since the previous quarter, of which the MCU increased by 6%, market expectations May be out of stock for a whole year.

Since last year (2017), the delivery time of many MCU manufacturers worldwide has been extended from four months to six months, and it is even more rare for Japanese MCU factories to extend up to nine months. According to Taiwan media reports, STMicroelectronics reported a huge increase in demand for automotive electronics in the second half of last year, and product shortages were serious. Others include: IDM plants such as Deyi, Renesas, and NXP. From 3 months to half a year, many downstream customers transferred orders to Taiwan factories, benefiting NTD.

ST's out-of-stock products include 8-bit MCUs, Cortex M0 / M3 / M4, etc. The delivery period has been extended. By the first quarter of this year, the situation has not improved, and the industry believes that it is difficult to improve in the first half of this year. In addition, Taiwan Media pointed out that Apple's new iPhone will fully introduce 3D sensing in 2018. STMicroelectronics is one of the few suppliers and IDM factories, which will inevitably continue to squeeze out the MCU's production capacity.

According to market semiconductor intelligence data, most of the global electronics manufacturing operations last year were quite prosperous. Even Japanese semiconductor factories have not seen positive growth for many years, driving sales of electronic components such as IC chips. It is estimated that the global market for automotive electronics and Internet of things applications will continue to explode and continue to grow. With the full capacity of silicon wafer fabs, the global MCU market in 2018 will continue to face supply shortages throughout the year.

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