According to TrendForce research, due to steady weakening of overall demand for consumer electronics, inventory pressure has increased among downstream distributors and brands. Although there are still sporadic shortages of specific components, the curtain has officially fallen on a two-year wave of shortages in general, and brands have gradually suspended stocking in response to changes in market conditions. However, stable demand for automotive and industrial equipment is key to supporting the ongoing growth of foundry output value. At the same time, since the creation of a marginal amount of new capacity in 2Q22 led to growth in wafer shipments and a price hike for certain wafers, this drove output value among top ten foundries to reach US$33.20 billion in 2Q22. Quarterly growth fell to 3.9% on a weakening consumer market.

A prelude to inventory correction was officially revealed in 3Q22. In addition to intensifying severity in the initial wave of order slashing for LDDI/TDDI, and TV SoC, diminishing order volume also extended to non-Apple smartphone APs and peripheral IC PMIC, CIS, and consumer electronics PMICs, and mid-to-low-end MCUs, posing a challenge for foundry capacity utilization. However, the launch of the new iPhone in 3Q22 is expected to prop up a certain amount of stocking momentum for the sluggish market. Therefore, top ten foundry revenue in 3Q22 is expected to maintain a growth trend driven by high-priced processes and quarterly growth rate is expected to be slightly higher than in 2Q22.

According to the latest TrendForce statistics, revenue of the top ten global IC design houses reached US$39.56 billion in 2Q22, growing 32% YoY. Growth was primarily driven by demand for data centers, networking, IoT, and high-end product portfolios. AMD achieved synergy through mergers and acquisitions. In addition to climbing to third place, the company also posted the highest annual revenue growth rate in 2Q22 at 70%.

Qualcomm continues in the No. 1 position worldwide, exhibiting growth in the mobile phone, RF front-end, automotive, and IoT sectors. Sales of mid/low-end mobile phone APs were weak but demand for high-end mobile phone APs was relatively stable. Company revenue reached US$9.38 billion, or 45% growth YoY. NVIDIA benefitted from expanded application of GPUs in data centers to expand this product category's revenue share past the 50% mark to 53.5%, making up for the 13% YoY slump in its game application business, bringing total revenue to US$7.09 billion, though annual growth rate slowed to 21%. AMD reorganized its business after the addition of Xilinx and Pensando. The company's embedded division revenue increased by 2,228% YoY. In addition, its data center department also made a considerable contribution. AMD posted revenue of US$6.55 billion, achieving 70% growth YoY, highest amongst the top ten. Broadcom's sales performance in semiconductor solutions remained solid and demand for cloud services, data centers, and networking is quite strong. The company's purchase order backlog is still increasing with 2Q22 revenue reaching US$6.49 billion, an annual growth rate of 31%.

According to TrendForce research, material supply improvement and spiking demand for enterprise SSDs from North American hyperscale data center and enterprise clients in 2Q22 coupled with the Kioxia contamination incident in 1Q22 prompted customers to ramp up procurement to avoid future supply shortages. Manufacturers also give priority to meeting the needs of server customers due to the high pricing of enterprise SSD. In the second quarter, overall revenue of the enterprise SSD market increased by 31.3% to US$7.32 billion.

As the market leader, Samsung has grown its enterprise SSD revenue to US$3.26 billion with the recovery of enterprise SSD procurement. Especially in the second quarter, when orders for other consumer products continued to decline, enterprise SSD became the company's outlet for reducing production capacity. At present, Samsung has been continuously investing in the development of next-generation transmission specification products such as the CXL 2.0 product released at the Flash Summit in early August, in order to maintain a leading position in the market.

United Microelectronics Corporation ("UMC" or "The Company"), a leading global semiconductor foundry, today announced its consolidated operating results for the second quarter of 2022. Second quarter consolidated revenue was NT$72.06 billion, increasing 13.6% QoQ from NT$63.42 billion in 1Q22. Compared to a year ago, 2Q22 revenue grew 41.5% YoY from NT$50.91 billion in 2Q21. Consolidated gross margin for 2Q22 reached 46.5%. Net income attributable to the shareholders of the parent was NT$21.33 billion, with earnings per ordinary share of NT$1.74.

Jason Wang, UMC co-president, said, "In the second quarter, we delivered results in line with guidance, thanks to continuous strong demand for UMC's differentiated processes across our end markets. Overall wafer shipments rose 4.3% from the previous quarter, while higher average selling price and a favorable foreign exchange rate lifted second-quarter gross margin to 46.5%. Revenue from our 22/28 nm portfolio increased 29% sequentially, driven by the additional capacity at Fab 12A P5 that came online during the second quarter. We are confident in the long-term growth prospects of our 22/28 nm business, which now represents 22% of UMC's overall wafer revenue, and has demonstrated solid traction for OLED display drivers, image processors, WiFi, and automotive applications. As structural trends drive semiconductor content increase in end devices from smartphones to automobiles, it is our conviction that 28 nm is a long-lasting node that will be important for many existing and emerging applications for years to come."

Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended June 30, 2022, as compared to the corresponding period of last fiscal year:

• Revenue was $51.9 billion and increased 12% (up 16% in constant currency)
• Operating income was $20.5 billion and increased 8% (up 14% in constant currency)
• Net income was $16.7 billion and increased 2% (up 7% in constant currency)
• Diluted earnings per share was $2.23 and increased 3% (up 8% in constant currency)

"We see real opportunity to help every customer in every industry use digital technology to overcome today's challenges and emerge stronger," said Satya Nadella, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft. "No company is better positioned than Microsoft to help organizations deliver on their digital imperative - so they can do more with less."

TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) today announced consolidated revenue of NT$534.14 billion, net income of NT$237.03 billion, and diluted earnings per share of NT$9.14 (US$1.55 per ADR unit) for the second quarter ended June 30, 2022. Year-over-year, second quarter revenue increased 43.5% while net income and diluted EPS both increased 76.4%. Compared to first quarter 2022, second quarter results represented an 8.8% increase in revenue and a 16.9% increase in net income. All figures were prepared in accordance with TIFRS on a consolidated basis.

In US dollars, second quarter revenue was $18.16 billion, which increased 36.6% year-over-year and increased 3.4% from the previous quarter. Gross margin for the quarter was 59.1%, operating margin was 49.1%, and net profit margin was 44.4%. In the second quarter, shipments of 5-nanometer accounted for 21% of total wafer revenue; 7- nanometer accounted for 30%. Advanced technologies, defined as 7-nanometer and more advanced technologies, accounted for 51% of total wafer revenue.

With the launch of Apple Silicon for Mac computers, Apple has established itself as a great user of the Arm instruction set. Starting with M1, the company released an entirely new family of products running Apple Silicon. Today, thanks to the research of Strategy Analytics company, we have information that Apple is capturing as much as 90% of the revenue share present in the Arm PC market. The Arm PC market is a tiny subset of the entire PC market, mainly equipped with one-off Windows-on-Arm devices, Chromebook PCs, and Apple Macs. With the naturally low prices of the remaining Arm PCs, Apple Arm PCs offer a relatively high price point and a much more incredible selection of products.

On the global scale, Arm PCs now account for 9% of the total PC market share, where x86 vendors are dominating the field. "Apple's M-series family of processors set the benchmark and gave Apple a 2-3-year lead over the rest of the Arm-based PC processor vendors. Qualcomm captured just 3% revenue share in the Arm-based notebook PC processor market in 2021 and lags Apple in CPU performance," said Sravan Kundojjala, Director of Handset Component Technologies service at Strategy Analytics. This points to a particular case of Apple's better product and feeding the demand with higher-performing processors. Qualcomm's acquisition of Nuvia should yield different results in the coming years, as the new IP is yet to appear in Qualcomm SoCs.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) today reported record revenue for the first quarter ended May 1, 2022, of $8.29 billion, up 46% from a year ago and up 8% from the previous quarter, with record revenue in Data Center and Gaming. GAAP earnings per diluted share for the quarter were $0.64, down 16% from a year ago and down 46% from the previous quarter, and include an after-tax impact of $0.52 related to the $1.35 billion Arm acquisition termination charge. Non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1.36, up 49% from a year ago and up 3% from the previous quarter.

"We delivered record results in Data Center and Gaming against the backdrop of a challenging macro environment," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "The effectiveness of deep learning to automate intelligence is driving companies across industries to adopt NVIDIA for AI computing. Data Center has become our largest platform, even as Gaming achieved a record quarter.

According to TrendForce research, as manufacturers actively shifted production capacity to 128 layer products, the market turned to oversupply, resulting in a drop in contract prices in 1Q22, among which the decline in consumer-grade products was more pronounced. Although enterprise SSD purchase order volume has grown, demand for smart phone bits has weakened due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, the traditional off-season, and rising inflation. Client inventories have increased significantly, so it remains challenging for overall bit shipment volume to offset potential decline. In 1Q22, NAND Flash bit shipments and average selling prices fell by 0.5% and 2.3%, respectively, resulting in a 3.0% quarterly decrease in overall industry revenue to US$17.92 billion.

Although China's smartphone stocking momentum was marginally weak considering the off-season, due to sluggish supply on the part of Kioxia and WDC, Samsung's 1Q22 client SSD shipment bit growth was driven up by an influx of rush orders and North American enterprise SSD client orders also recovered significantly in March. Overall bit shipments increased by 9% QoQ and ASP decreased by 2% QoQ. In 1Q22, the NAND Flash portion of Samsung's electronics business posted revenue of US$6.32 billion, up 3.4% QoQ.

According to TrendForce research, due to vigorous stocking of various terminal applications causing a shortage of wafers in 2021, the global IC industry was severely undersupplied. This, coupled with spiking chip prices, boosted 2021 revenue of the global top ten IC design companies to US$127.4 billion, or 48% YoY. TrendForce further indicates three major disparities from the 2020 ranking. First, NVIDIA surpassed Broadcom to take the second position. Second, Taiwanese companies Novatek and Realtek rose to sixth and eighth place, respectively. Originally ranked tenth, Dialog was replaced at this position by Himax after Dialog was acquired by IDM giant Renesas.

Qualcomm continues its reign as number one in the world, primarily due to 51% and 63% growth YoY in sales of mobile phone SoC (System on Chip) and IoT chips, respectively. The addition of diversified development in its RF and automotive chip businesses were key to a 51% increase in revenue. NVIDIA implemented an integration of software and hardware, demonstrating its ambitions in creating a "comprehensive computing platform." Driven by annual growth of gaming graphics card and data center revenue at 64% and 59%, respectively, NVIDIA successfully climbed to second place. Broadcom benefited from the stable sales performance of network chips, broadband communication chips, and storage and bridging chips, with revenue growing 18% YoY. AMD's computer and graphics revenue grew by 45% YoY due to strong sales of the Ryzen CPU and Radeon GPU and rising average selling price. Coupled with accelerating demand from cloud companies, the annual revenue of AMD's enterprise, embedded, and semi-customized divisions increased by 113%, driving annual growth of total revenue to 68%.

With the debut of the Steam Deck handheld gaming console, the whole community wanted to grab one and made preorders for a few up-front months. Over the last five weeks, the console held the second spot as the best seller by revenue chart; however, that number changed in the console's favor. According to SteamDB, which collects information from Valve's Steam platform, the Steam Deck console climbed to the number one spot as the best selling item by revenue. This is no surprise given that the Steam Deck base model is priced at $399+, with top models going for $500. For the past three weeks, the leading competitor was the game Elder Ring, which sold 12 million copies in the past three weeks. We are yet to see if Steam Deck manages to hold the top spot in the charts or if other games start to defeat it.

A new quarter and another forecast shattering revenue report from TSMC, as the company beat analysts' forecasts by over US$658 million, with a total revenue for the quarter of US$17.6 billion and a net income of almost US$7.26 billion. That's an increase in net income of 45.1 percent or 35.5 percent in sales. Although the monetary figures might be interesting to some, far more interesting details were also shared, such as production updates about future nodes. As a followup on yesterday's news post about 3 nanometer nodes, the N3 node is officially on track for mass production in the second half of this year. TSMC says that customer engagement is stronger than at the start of its N7 and N7 nodes, with HPC and smartphone chip makers lining up to get onboard. The N3E node is, as reported yesterday, expected to enter mass production in the second half of 2023, or a year after N3. Finally, the N2 node is expected in 2025 and won't adhere to TSMC's two year process technology cadence.

Breaking down the revenue by nodes, N7 has taken back the lead over N5, as N7 accounted for 30 percent of TSMC's Q1 revenues up from 27 percent last quarter, but down from 35 percent in the previous year. N5 sits at 20 percent, which is down from 23 percent in the previous quarter, but up from 14 percent a year ago. The 16 and 28 nm nodes still hold on to 25 percent of TSMC's revenue, which is the same as a year ago and up slightly from the previous quarter. Remaining nodes are unchanged from last quarter.

The output value of the world's top 10 foundries in 4Q21 reached US$29.55 billion, or 8.3% growth QoQ, according to TrendForce's research. This is due to the interaction of two major factors. One is limited growth in overall production capacity. At present, the shortage of certain components for TVs and laptops has eased but there are other peripheral materials derived from mature process such as PMIC, Wi-Fi, and MCU that are still in short supply, precipitating continued fully loaded foundry capacity. Second is rising average selling price (ASP). In the fourth quarter, more expensive wafers were produced in succession led by TSMC and foundries continued to adjust their product mix to increase ASP. In terms of changes in this quarter's top 10 ranking, Nexchip overtook incumbent DB Hitek to clinch 10th place.

TrendForce believes that the output value of the world's top ten foundries will maintain a growth trend in 1Q22 but appreciation in ASP will still be the primary driver of said growth. However, since there are fewer first quarter working days in the Greater China Area due to the Lunar New Year holiday and this is the time when some foundries schedule an annual maintenance period, 1Q22 growth rate will be down slightly compared to 4Q21.

Acer Inc. (TWSE: 2353) announced today its consolidated revenues for February 2022 at NT$22.91 billion, the highest in eight years for the same period. The February revenues grew by 12.7% year-on-year (YoY), and year-to-February revenues of NT$48.06 billion grew by 9.7% YoY. Acer's public subsidiaries have all announced their monthly revenues, with year-to-February revenues growing by 30.6% YoY in total. Acer's strategy to establish multiple business engines continues to gain momentum, while the year-to-February revenues of businesses other than PCs and displays grew 22.7% YoY, faster than the overall corporate growth.

In 4Q21, NAND Flash bit shipments grew by only 3.3% QoQ, a significant decrease from the nearly 10% in 3Q21, according to TrendForce's investigations. ASP fell by nearly 5% and the overall industry posted revenue of US$18.5 billion, a QoQ decrease of 2.1%. This was primarily due to a decline in the purchase demand of various products and a market shift to oversupply causing a drop in contract prices. In 4Q21, with the exception of enterprise SSD, the supply of which was limited by insufficient upstream components, the prices of other NAND Flash products such as eMMC, UFS, and client SSD, all fell.

TrendForce's summary of NAND Flash market sales performance in 2021 is as follows: although there have been signs of weakening since 2H21, thanks to remote services and cloud demand driven by the pandemic, revenue performance still grew significantly compared to 2020. Revenue reached US$68.6 billion, up 21.1% YoY, the second-biggest increase since 2018.

Based on TSMC's official January 2022 revenue report, it looks like the company is set for another great year. Month-on-month revenues are up by 10.8 percent compared to December of last year and year-on-year revenues are up a whopping 35.8 percent. In actual money, that corresponds to a revenue of NT$172.18 billion, or roughly US$6.18 billion, so we're not talking about small potatoes here.

TSMC is forecasting a growth in sales of between 25 to 29 percent this year, assuming they can continue to deliver as expected to their customers. The first quarter sales are expected to land between US$16.6 and 17.2 billion, or around a 7.4 percent increase compared to last quarter. Its closest competitor in Taiwan also announced record profits, although at a mere NT$20.47 billion or about US$735 million. This is a month-to-month increase of a mere 0.95 percent, but an annual increase of a healthy 31.83 percent. UMC is expecting to be operating at full capacity for the remainder of this year, although no additional production capacity is expected. The company is said to be increasing its prices by five percent this year.

Acer Inc. announced today its consolidated revenues for January 2022 at NT$25.16 billion to reach an eight-year high for the same period. The January revenues grew by 7.1% year-on-year (YoY), and declined by 14.8% month-on-month due to seasonality. Logistics issues continue to be a bottleneck, while semi-conductor shortages are easing.

Acer's strategy to build multiple business engines continues to gain momentum. Meanwhile, businesses other than PCs and displays contributed to 19.0% of total revenues, compared to 16.1% contribution in January 2021. Among the Acer Group subsidiaries, the publicly-listed companies have all announced their January revenues, while Acer Gaming's revenues grew by 29.3% YoY and Acer Gadget's revenues grew by 24.9% YoY.

Seagate Technology Holdings plc (NASDAQ: STX) today reported financial results for its fiscal second quarter ended December 31, 2021. "Calendar 2021 was an outstanding year for Seagate. Compared with the prior calendar year, we grew revenue by 18% and more importantly, delivered free cash flow growth of 39%, which we are deploying effectively into our long-standing capital returns program," said Dave Mosley, Seagate's chief executive officer.

"The calendar year was capped by strong December quarter performance including our highest revenue level in over 6-years, supported by cloud data center demand for our high capacity nearline products. We continue to execute amid a very dynamic business environment. Barring any significant additional macro disruptions, we expect to build on our 2021 performance this calendar year and beyond as favorable demand trends support revenue expansion consistent with our long-term financial model range of 3-to-6% growth."

Global semiconductor sales revenue grew by a more than comfortable 25% in 2021, hitting a new record above $500 Billion for the first time. The data, part of Gartner's preliminary report on the state of the industry in 2021, bookends yet another year plagued with shortages and too little supply for the thirst of the consumer and business sectors. Naturally, supply constraints have led to higher ASP (Average Selling Prices) for the hardware that does get manufactured and distributed, as we've seen all too well in the graphics card market.

"As the global economy bounced back in 2021, shortages appeared throughout the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in the automotive industry," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "The resulting combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases drove semiconductors' average selling price higher (ASP), contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021.

Worldwide semiconductor revenue increased 25.1% in 2021 to total $583.5 billion, crossing the $500 billion threshold for the first time, according to preliminary results by Gartner, Inc.

"As the global economy bounced back in 2021, shortages appeared throughout the semiconductor supply chain, particularly in the automotive industry," said Andrew Norwood, research vice president at Gartner. "The resulting combination of strong demand as well as logistics and raw material price increases drove semiconductors' average selling price higher (ASP), contributing to overall revenue growth in 2021.

Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU) today announced results for its first quarter of fiscal 2022, which ended Dec. 2, 2021. "Micron delivered solid fiscal first quarter results led by strong product portfolio momentum," said Micron Technology President and CEO Sanjay Mehrotra. "We are now shipping our industry-leading DRAM and NAND technologies across major end markets, and we delivered new solutions to data center, client, mobile, graphics and automotive customers. As powerful secular trends including 5G, AI, and EV adoption fuel demand growth, our technology leadership and world-class execution position us to create significant shareholder value in fiscal 2022 and beyond."

The semicondustor market in 3Q21 is red hot with total revenue of the global top 10 IC design (fabless) companies reaching US$33.7 billion or 45% growth YoY, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. In addition to the Taiwanese companies MediaTek, Novatek, and Realtek already on the list, Himax comes in at number ten, bringing the total number of Taiwanese companies on the top 10 list to 4.

Qualcomm has been buoyed by continuing robust demand for 5G mobile phones form major mobile phone manufacturers with further revenue growth from its processor and radio frequency front end (RFFE) departments. Qualcomm's IoT department benefited from strong demand in the consumer electronics, edge networking, and industrial sectors, posting revenue growth of 66% YoY, highest among Qualcomm departments. In turn, this drove Qualcomm's total 3Q21 revenue to US$7.7 billion, 56% growth YoY, and ranking first in the world.

Acer Inc. announced today its consolidated revenues for November at NT$28.85 billion, marking the highest in eight years for the same period, up 3.0% month-over-month (MoM) and up 0.5% year-over-year (YoY). Consolidated revenues for year-to-November were NT$289.3 billion, up 16.3% YoY. In terms of US$, year-to-November revenues have reached US$10.3 billion, which is already 9.8% higher than the full-year revenues of 2020. Acer's strategy to build multiple business engines to weather through the future continues to show good momentum, and listed subsidiaries have all reported their November business results, showing growth of 39.8% YoY in total.

Factors such as the rising popularity of topics related to the metaverse and UGC (user-generated content), as well as the rapid increase in AR/VR device shipment, will likely result in the creation of a growing body of virtual reality content in the market, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. TrendForce expects annual global virtual reality content revenue to grow at a 40% CAGR from US$2.16 billion in 2021 to US$8.31 billion in 2025.

TrendForce further indicates that gaming/entertainment, videos, and social interactions comprise the primary categories of virtual reality content. Incidentally, as the construction of the virtual world and the development of virtual reality content are unlikely to be accomplished by only a handful of companies alone, companies in this space will therefore place an increasing emphasis on UGC instead. Leading companies will likely leverage the build-out of virtual reality platforms/environments and the provisioning of developmental tools/interfaces in order to not only lower the barrier to entry for content creation, but also raise user participation, thereby driving up the content market for virtual reality applications.

The growth of the NAND Flash market in 3Q21 was primarily driven by strong demand from the data center and smartphone industries, according to TrendForce's latest investigations. More specifically, NAND Flash suppliers' hyperscaler and enterprise clients kept up their procurement activities that began in 2Q21 in order to deploy products based on new processor platforms. Major smartphone brands, on the other hand, likewise expanded their NAND Flash procurement activities during the quarter as they prepared to release their new flagship models. As such, clients in both server and smartphone industries made significant contributions to the revenue growth of the NAND Flash industry for 3Q21. At the same time, however, suppliers also warned that orders from PC OEMs began showing signs of decline. On the whole, the industry's quarterly total NAND Flash bit shipment increased by nearly 11% QoQ for 3Q21, and the overall NAND Flash ASP rose by nearly 4% QoQ for the same quarter. Thanks to rising prices and expanding shipments, the quarterly total NAND Flash revenue increased by 15% QoQ to a new record high of US$18.8 billion in 3Q21.