From the Lunar New Year of the Tiger in 2022, the 7-day Spring Festival holiday has not become a background factor to hinder the continuously burning hot electronic components market. Since the first work week of February, global IC practitioners have been bombarded by various news of price increase documents and merger notices from MFGs, foundry shutdowns caused by the epidemic counterattack, and raw material pollution.

According to the current production capacity and delivery dates reported by major MFGs and the increasing material demand gap, this short supply will not be reasonably relieved until the second half of 2023.

Regarding the current global supply situation, the major MFGs give priority to take care of the needs and orders of big customers, there is less chance for the downstream small and medium-sized end users to be stably supplied. It is the best solution to develop long-term supply partners.  

Texas Instruments is hot in February and the stock distributors seems like gambling. The TI factory focuses on the production of materials which are currently in severe short supply. Correspondingly the lead time of those parts is shortened. And the open market will have the illusion of a temporary price drop when partial inventory comes in. However, after they are shopped, the new delivery from MFG is unknown. It is probable to get nothing even by L/T 50+weeks.

Customer demands are mostly PMIC materials and high-end controlled materials. Structural out-of-stock status continues. Some materials have been overpriced in the early stage and the price reduction trend continues, but it is still impossible to quickly return to the average price in the normal period.

Current short-supply TI PMIC (TPS, TLV, BQ, UCC).

If the customers have urgent orders and the price is accepted, it is necessary to procure asap. Because the temporary price decline does not mean continuous decline while the market is changing rapidly.

ADI demand is still hot in February, and the delivery time of some materials from the factory tends to shorten. The general materials (amplifier, isolator), affected by the dual factors - the high stock price in January and the relatively sufficient stock of customers, the transaction is not very hot. ADI is relatively at the stage of optimizing production capacity. If there is stock with acceptable price, it’s okay to buy; the price of power management chips is bullish.

Among our ADI inventory ADUM, ADG, AD7, AD8, the L/T of ADUM is currently shortened to 50-60 weeks. Due to the large demand for these, the limited stock released by the factory cannot meet the customers’ long-term needs, most customers have to regularly shop the goods in the market.

At present, HMC series performs relatively stable. Our inventory sells good. 

The current delivery of NXP is not promising. MCU/MPU are in severe short supply. The L/T of some PN is extended to over 90 weeks; among which 16-bit and 32-bit MCU are strongly demanded (such as MK64 and MK60); the L/T of automotive MCU continues to extend; and the price of short-supply material stays high, (such as MCIMX).

The MICROCHIP is the favourite in February. The MFG announced price increase by at least 10% for the whole line from March 1, which will not only affect the new orders entered after March 1, but also the orders that have not been delivered in history - which also have to be delivered at new price. This adjustment stimulates the end users to start frantically shopping the open stock. Meanwhile, the stock distributors offers’ validity was also shortened to be available on the day of quoting only.

1. This month's demand is mainly concentrated on ATMEL's 8-bit MCU, such as ATMEGA, AT90 and so on, whose leadtime maintains over 50 weeks, and the production of leadtime order is arranging to 2023, according to the manufacture.

2. The delivery time of some EEPROM is over 60 weeks, causes the market price of stock is rising again and again.

After acquired by AMD, XILINX will definitely be affected on the leadtime. The price increase document in November 2021 has not been put in place, but a new round of integration is about to begin. At present, it is rumored that some 7 series materials will also try out the quota system, which means that there will be fewer customers who can get the regular price of the 7 series materials.

The popularity of XILINX's CPLD has continued to rise recently, which may be mainly due to the fact that the stock price of LATTICE goes up too high, and most end customers in  consumer electronics cannot afford it.

1. Now the FPGA represented by the 6S series is still the hot mainstream, because the production capacity has not been properly allocated, and the arrival of new batches is basically hopeless.

2. Some XILINX EOL materials whose configuration chips starting with XCF (the part number starts with XCF) have a huge room for price increases, because it is almost impossible to get the stock in future.

3. The price increase in CPLDs of XC3S series and XC95 series is exaggerated, since the cooperation between Samsung and XILINX has been terminated, the stock from the production line manufactured by Samsung is scarce.

ST’s MCU is very popular. The STM32F series ushered in a wave of price increases after CNY, as the delivery time continued to be extended. The manufacture has released news that the production in the first and second quarters of 2022 will be reduced, which may be intended to consume the current market stock first. Some customers have heard the news and stocked up as soon as possible, so the stock prices of ST materials are only going to get higher in the short term. Please pay attention to follow up the key demand in time.

With the demand for automotive electronics and other related application fields continuing to increase, before the structural shortage has been alleviated, ST has a good prospect, as a leading manufacturer of automotive MCU, which deserves our attention.

ALTERA had a good deal in February, and this top manufacturer of FPGA has a strong reputation.

1. The current price increase series of traditional FPGA mainly focus on medium-scale industrial grades series and higher-end CYCLONE series. At present, due to the price of such kind of chips increased a lot, we recommend that customers do not need to compare prices for some parts that we have in stock, but ensure the price and quality first.

2. Regarding the ENPIRION series, the power configuration chip which P/N starts with EN, franchise notified customers in January that production of this series would be discontinued in March 2022 and shipment would be stopped in March 2023. Since April, the price before shipment has increased 3 times, and it cumulatively increased 9 times after October.

As soon as this letter came out, stock prices in the market skyrocketed. Since the leadtime of this series has reached over 99WEEKS before, no one knows if it is warming up for the news of EOL. Nowadays, chips of power management basically belong to the situation that “to buy is to earn”.

MEMORY

Memories: led by MICRON, TOSHIBA, SAMSUNG. Due to the overall shortage , it is necessary to pay attention to the chain reaction of shortage and price increase between these alternative brands.

1. Well-informed sources say NAND FLASH from Micron will have a 25% price increase, the reason has something to do the pollution of the raw materials of Western Digital and Kiakami factories, which has impacted the production capacity on NAND.  DDR will also has a slight increase, some distributors have been notified of the new price from manufacturer, the stock market is expected to show some performance by March.

2.SAMSUNG: At present EMMC products are hottest sell, demand from customers are focus on 4G and 8G devices, which are in huge shortage, price on stock is crazy.

Discrete components

Discrete components: Power devices headed by ON and INFINEON have great potential in the future market, under the current shortage situation, lead time on MOSFET is basically more than 40 weeks. Especially on ONSEMI logic IC, MOS, and image sensor is still prolonged, and price continues to increase. INFINEON has released an official announcement pointing to the intention to increase the price. At present, we mainly rely on stock inventory on discrete devices. With the rise of automotive electronics and new energy industries, the prospect of discrete devices worths to be expected.

At present, the allocation situation is still ongoing, but the last thing we can't lose is to maintain our original intention. In order to establish a longer-term relationship with customers, our sales need to improve their ability to judge the current chaotic market. the changes of our own stock inventory are just tip of the iceberg, we need to figure out the chain effect behind it.

End

The continued heat of the spot market is not only cased by the unbalanced supply and demand due to counterattack of the epidemic and insufficient production capacity, but also shows the potential demand in the related industries is still increasing. After the demand continues to grow steadily,  independent distributor like us will face greater opportunities and challenges.

The experience learned from the market fluctuations that lasted for two years can help us to communicate and dig deeper from client and suply chain, be more flexible and give positive feedbacks between sales and procurement, provide downstream customers with more forward-looking purchasing advice by comprehensively considering problems and market analysis, thus making us a more valuable distributor in the electronics supply chain.

Welcome to the monthly analysis report on spot market from Unibetter Technology. I hope this summary and analysis of the real spot market can bring you some help and value. If you have any questions or inquiries, please call or email: sales@unibetter-ic.com.