According to media reports, global chip makers are worried about the slowdown in the smartphone market in recent months, and consumers’ strong desire to increase video content has provided strong support for memory chip makers.
In fact, last month's revenue reports from chip makers and smartphone companies showed a more interesting thing: Smartphone manufacturers are using memory to meet consumer demand.
A typical example is Apple’s quarterly report last week. Apple said that iPhone X is the most popular iPhone model in March. It is the most expensive and most sought-after iPhone.
The optimistic assessments of Samsung, Qualcomm and STMicroelectronics have also eased people’s concerns.
Samsung predicted last month that "high-density" chips with greater processing power and storage space will sell well; this may ease the overall decline in smartphone sales, after all, consumers are willing to pay higher fees for mobile phones that can easily watch and store video.
Kim Rok-ho, an analyst at Hana Financial Investment, said that even if smart phone shipments slowed down, each smartphone would have to make up for the memory chip makers if it had built-in more storage space and higher performance chips. Mobile phone shipments slowed down.
The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index is one of the agents of the global chip makers. The company’s stock price fell sharply from the peak in mid-March due to concerns about Apple’s sales volume, and has stabilized in the past two weeks, so far it has risen by 4.4%. .
Since the middle of 2016, the $122 billion memory chip industry has experienced unprecedented prosperity. Since smart phones and cloud services require powerful chips to store large amounts of data, the memory chip industry has grown by nearly 70% in 2017 alone.
Prospects for Micron Technology and SK Hynix are still strong. Micron's share price has risen by 18% this year, and SK Hynix's share price has increased by 8.5%.
Despite this, the decline in smartphone shipments is bad news for microprocessor makers who design microprocessors because each mobile phone requires only one microprocessor chip compared to the rapidly growing storage capacity in the device.
According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, global smartphone shipments fell by 2% in the first quarter and fell by 9% in the fourth quarter.
After Qualcomm's main authorized business revenue decreased by 44% in the latest quarter, its Xiaolong series processors supporting many smartphones played an important supplementary role.
TSMC's business is closely related to the smartphone industry, which was significantly affected by the slowdown in handset sales in the latest quarter. So far, Qualcomm and TSMC’s shares have fallen by 21% and 2.6% respectively this year.
Tags：