Text—Wang Shuyi
Figure—All are from IDC unless otherwise noted
Recently, market research institute Gartner released data to count the procurement status of the world's top ten chip buyers in 2021. The top ten global manufacturers in 2021 are the same as in 2020, but due to Huawei's sanctions by the United States, the amount of chips that can be purchased has fallen sharply, falling from third to seventh, and the purchase amount has fallen from $22.71 billion to $15.38 billion. However, due to the aggressive procurement strategies of some manufacturers, even if Huawei can maintain the purchase amount in 2020, its ranking can only be ranked fifth in 2021.
Source: Gartner
Specifically, the top ten global semiconductor chip buyers in 2021 are Apple, Samsung, Lenovo (up one place), BBK Group (up two places), Dell, Xiaomi (up two places), Huawei (down four places), HP (down one place), Hon Hai Precision and HP Enterprises. The top ten semiconductor buyers threshold is $6.74 billion, and apple at the top of the list is spending $68.27 billion, which is just ten times more than ten times that of the tenth-place HP company.
In the top ten, except for Huawei's procurement amount, which fell by 32.3% year-on-year, the rest of the manufacturers recorded double-digit growth. Among them, Xiaomi increased by 68.2%, BBK Group (including VIVO and OPPO) increased by 63.8%, the procurement strategy was the most aggressive, and Lenovo's procurement amount increased by more than 30% year-on-year, ranking the top three in the top ten. Hon Hai Precision's procurement amount increased by only 19.9% year-on-year, which was not as good as the industry's average growth rate, and another procurement policy was Prudential HP Enterprise, whose procurement amount increased by 24.8% year-on-year, which was also lower than the industry average growth rate.
Overall, Asian companies are generally optimistic, with Samsung's procurement amount increasing by 28.5% year-on-year, with the highest growth rate in the top ten except for Chinese companies. The highest growth in the purchase amount of the four U.S. companies was Hewlett-Packard, with a growth rate of 28.3%, 3.2 percentage points higher than the average growth rate of the industry, but it was already the largest deviation from the average growth rate of the industry among U.S. companies, and the remaining three U.S. companies, Apple, grew 26.0%, 0.9 percentage points higher than the average growth rate, Dell grew 25.4%, 0.3 percentage points higher than the average growth rate, and HP Enterprises was only 0.3 percentage points lower than the average growth rate.
In this comparison, the procurement strategies of Xiaomi and BBK are too aggressive. Of course, back in the first and second quarters of 2021, in the face of the high-speed growth of the terminal market represented by their respective smartphones, as well as the rumored price increase and shortage news in the market, the supply chain responsible team of Xiaomi and BBK Group may still increase the intensity of orders and strive to strive for more component inventory to ensure that the supply chain can support the action of seizing Huawei's vacated market.
According to IDC statistics, xiaomi and OPPO smartphone shipments increased by more than 60% in the first quarter of 2021, and VIVO also exceeded 40%. In the second quarter, oppo, VIVO growth rate declined, but still more than 30%, and millet growth rate in the second quarter of 86.6%, if the second half of the procurement plan is based on the first half of the year or the first quarter of the purchase volume to make adjustments, the annual increase of 60% is still reasonable.
But if you look closely, this reflects the old spicy supply chain management of American companies such as Apple. In the first quarter of 2021, the growth rate of Apple mobile phones also exceeded 50%, and the market vacated by Huawei mobile phones due to sanctions belongs to the clear card, and everyone wants to grab it, but Apple has not ventured in procurement, and the annual purchase amount has increased by 26% year-on-year, but it is enough to support Apple's mobile phone to rank first in the growth rate of the Chinese market.
Of course, globally, among the top five mobile phone manufacturers, Xiaomi recorded the highest growth rate, but the amount of stockpiled exceeded 60%, and the shipment volume increased by only 29.3%, which can be reasonably speculated that the proportion of Xiaomi chip inventory is not low.
Some people may defend the procurement strategy of Xiaomi and BBK Group: in 2021, the global shortage of stocks led to a sharp rise in chips, considering the price increase factor, Xiaomi and BBK Group procurement increased by 60% and the shipment growth was up to less than 30%, which does not mean that there is a lot of inventory.
This justification is that some of the domestic unprofessional media all day long to render the information of the price increase of the stock to interfere, the supplier in the Xiaomi, BBK Group such as the annual shipment of hundreds of millions of large customers negotiations, the price is difficult to take advantage, not to say that want to rise can rise. In fact, before the industry-wide hype of price increases and shortages in history from 2020 to 2021, large customers often require suppliers to reduce prices in a fixed proportion every year - this is also a concrete embodiment of Moore's Law in procurement.
Screenshot of IC Insights website
If the qualitative explanation is not enough, let's look at the data. According to the market research institute IC Insights, the average selling price of the semiconductor industry will increase by only 3% in 2021, and based on the 20% shipment growth and the selling price increase of about 3%, the procurement strategy of the four US companies is undoubtedly more reasonable.
Perhaps some people will explain that only looking at mobile phones is not comprehensive, after all, companies such as Xiaomi and Apple are multi-field layouts. But whether it's wearables, tablets and traditional PCs, the industry growth rate in 2021 is more general. Taking wearables as an example, IDC listed data for three quarters of 2021 (the fourth quarter data has not yet been released), of which the first and third quarters, Xiaomi shipments decreased year-on-year, only in the second quarter recorded growth.
Wearable market situation in the first three quarters of 2021
PC, tablet, Xiaomi shipments did not enter the top five, while pc fifth Acer Group shipped only about 23.91 million units in 2021.
In 2021, Huawei, the fifth largest tablet in the world, shipped only 9.7 million units a year.
Even if Xiaomi and BBK Group have excellent performance in these markets, the proportion of these markets affecting their stockpiling is very low, which should not exceed 20%. If we look at IDC's tracking data again, we find something very interesting: every market is hot in the first quarter of 2021.
The average growth rate of the PC market industry reached 55.2%, and Apple shipments increased by even more than 100%.
Tablet PC industry-wide shipment growth also reached 55.2%, of which Lenovo and Amazon growth rate of more than 100%.
Coupled with the front of the smartphone (first quarter shipments industry-wide growth of 25%) and wearable (first quarter shipments industry-wide growth of 34.4%), generalized consumer electronics in the first quarter of 2021 shipments increased by more than 20%, which is undoubtedly the root cause of the industry-wide supply tightness.
But this high rate of growth is not sustainable. Starting around the third quarter of 2021, various markets have declined.
Obviously, the real market inflection point should have appeared before the third quarter, but Xiaomi and BBK Group should be too optimistic about the market to buy 60% more components than last year, but the growth rate of product shipments is not as optimistic as shown in the first quarter, so it has considerable inventory pressure.
On the other hand, the four US companies on the list, in addition to HP enterprises because they are mainly facing the enterprise-level market, the reference significance for domestic competitors is small, Apple, Dell and HP, the same to see the first quarter of 2021 super high-speed growth, Apple also hopes to get Huawei's market share after the withdrawal, but these three are still steady in procurement, and did not venture forward. In terms of supply chain management, mainland enterprises also need to learn from foreign competitors, and there is still a lot of room for progress.
Don't forget that Apple's current CEO, Cook, was favored by Jobs with his outstanding supply chain management skills. Cook, then chief operating officer, took over after Jobs became seriously ill, and he ran Apple for ten years, and the market value of Apple from less than $500 billion was once more than three trillion US dollars, of which supply chain management can contribute much, probably not much domestic counterparts can calculate.