Recently, media reports indicate that Samsung Electronics announced during its latest earnings call that the future focus of its memory business will shift away from consumer PCs and mobile devices, moving towards enterprise sectors such as HBM (High Bandwidth Memory), DDR5 server memory, and enterprise-grade SSDs.
On May 10th, leading semiconductor foundry TSMC released its performance for April. According to the data, TSMC achieved revenue of NT$236.02 billion (approximately RMB 52.6 billion) in April 2024, representing a year-on-year increase of 59.6% and a month-on-month increase of 20.9%. For the period from January to April 2024, TSMC reported revenue of NT$866.5 billion (approximately RMB 184.6 billion), marking a year-on-year growth of 26.2%. Previously, TSMC announced consolidated revenue of approximately NT$592.64 billion for the first quarter of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 16.5%, the fastest growth rate in over a year. The net profit for the same period was approximately NT$225.49 billion, up 8.9% year-on-year.
On May 13th, Intel announced the appointment of Kevin O'Buckley as the head of its chip foundry services division. Intel stated that O'Buckley will succeed company veteran Stuart Pann, who established Intel's foundry division under the company's new operational model. O'Buckley will report to Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger.
As the global economy faces higher inflation risks and inventory corrections in the downstream sector in the second half of 2022, IC design companies are more sensitive and responsive to market changes than wafer foundries. TrendForce states that factors such as weaker consumer spending, the pandemic, reduced corporate IT expenditures, and a slowdown in demand from cloud service providers have all impacted the total revenue performance of the top 10 IC design companies in Q4 2022, with a quarter-on-quarter decline of 9.2%, approximately $33.96 billion.
As Intel Sapphire Rapids and AMD Genoa server platforms are about to enter mass production, recent market reports suggest that Server DDR5 RDIMM is facing PMIC compatibility issues. DRAM manufacturers and PMIC suppliers are working on resolving the issue. TrendForce believes this situation will have two effects: first, DRAM manufacturers will increase their procurement share of MPS (Monolithic Power Systems) PMICs, which are unaffected by the issue. Second, as current DDR5 Server DRAM production remains on older processes, short-term supply will inevitably be affected, leading to an estimated Q2 DDR5 Server DRAM price decline converging from the originally forecasted 15-20% to 13-18%.
Even though manufacturers continue to cut production, demand for servers, smartphones, and laptops has yet to pick up, leaving the NAND Flash market in a state of oversupply. TrendForce predicts that the average price of NAND Flash will continue to decline in Q2, with a quarter-on-quarter drop of 5-10%. The key to restoring supply-demand balance lies in whether manufacturers will further reduce production. TrendForce believes that if current demand does not continue to decrease, NAND Flash prices may stabilize and rebound in Q4. On the other hand, if demand remains weak during the peak season, the price rebound may be delayed.
