Fox friends, did you stay up late the other day to watch the Apple Spring Conference in the early morning? The fruit was originally wanted to see, but I was too tired to go straight to sleep ~ but when I woke up to see Apple release these new products, I found that I chose to sleep really right! iPhone SE 3 replaced by an A15 chip, with an old mold, 64GB actually sold 3499!
Just when I wanted to write a 10,000-word article scolding Cook, a "traitor", the emergence of a piece of news made me think that the price increase of the iPhone SE 3 may not be all Apple's pot...
According to the Financial Associated Press on March 9, some IC designers said that TSMC plans to raise the 8-inch mature process FOUNDRY quotation in the third quarter, and the 12-inch mature and advanced process is still under evaluation.
In fact, in September last year, TSMC notified customers that the foundry price of all chips increased by up to 20%. Among them, the quotation of sub-7nm process technology rose by 3%-10%, and the price of mature processes above 12nm rose by 20%. That is to say, the Android high-end flagship camp is still selling so expensive this year, in addition to impacting the high-end, the overall rise in the price of supply chain components and materials is also an important reason.
According to The Fruit, the downstream of the 8-inch wafer covers: power management chips (PMIC), CMOS image sensing chips, fingerprint recognition chips, display driver ICs, RF chips and power devices, while the 12-inch wafer covers the fields of consumer electronics such as AI chips, SoCs, GPUs, and memory.
Therefore, you should understand why more and more manufacturers do not send chargers now ~ on the surface is an environmentally friendly earth, but in fact, it saves a lot of costs! Because power management chips (PMICs) are made from 8-inch wafers that are currently very tightly produced
However, for TSMC's several price increases, Guozi believes that it is still relatively reasonable ~ As the world's largest and most advanced wafer foundry, TSMC's every move will affect the global semiconductor industry. In order to maintain its leading position in the market, TSMC announced a huge plan of three years of capital expenditure of $100 billion the year before: mainly to expand advanced processes such as 5nm and 3nm, but the result is that it needs to spend much more than in normal years.
Since research and development has spent more, it is necessary to earn more ~ Coupled with the rollover of the main competitor Samsung's 5nm process, this makes TSMC's "starting price" more obvious. And I believe that TSMC's price increase this time is estimated to be "three,six or nine users". Why do I say "also", because in the last price increase: TSMC will increase the price by different ranges according to the importance of customers
For example, ultra-VVVIP customers like Apple have only 3% increase in price, and the probability is that the price will increase in the next 3nm process. Because according to the Weibo digital blogger @mobile phone chip master' breaking news: iPhone 13 series A15 enjoys TSMC's preferential treatment to maintain the price of the wafer without price increase. Good guys, is this not an important reason for the iPhone 13 series to increase the amount and reduce the price?
But this is also understandable, after all, Apple is TSMC's "money daddy" ~ according to a data compiled by Bloomberg and DigTimes: in the proportion of TSMC's top ten customer revenue contribution, Apple's revenue contribution has reached 25.93%! A quarter of TSMC's revenue is also far ahead of other TSMC customers.
Judging from the above data, TSMC's dependence on Apple is relatively high! And the proportion of revenue contributed by Apple is also continuing to grow. That is to say, in the context of the limited production capacity caused by the epidemic: TSMC will definitely prioritize more production capacity for the production of Apple's chips. It's just that other Android phones use MediaTek, qualcomm processors do not have this benefit. In the future, the overall profit margin and high-end market share of Android mobile phones are becoming more and more difficult.
So that's why Xiaomi OV Glory, these domestic mobile phone manufacturers, should rush to the high-end. Because the profit is getting less and less, so the price can only be raised continuously... But in the past two years, Qualcomm is really not powerful, two consecutive generations of fire dragons directly let the Android high-end flagship market finish the calf...
Not only that, there is also news that TSMC not only increased the price of the OEM, but even required the equipment of upstream suppliers to reduce the price by 15%, thereby reducing operating costs and improving gross profit margins. Good guys, but according to the current absolute advantage of TSMC, it is indeed the bottom line ~ although now it seems that TSMC's wave of price increase operations is "sitting on the ground". But in the end, it is still a compliance with the situation, after all, the investment scale of advanced processes is huge and the payback period is extended. To a certain extent, it will cause the gross profit margin to face a decline, so it is natural for TSMC to rethink its pricing strategy.
However, TSMC's wave of price increases has a high probability that we consumers will pay for it. Even if the price rises, you see these Snapdragon 8 flagship mobile phones this year, the power consumption and heat generation in winter are already so fierce. This is going to be summer, I'm afraid it's not a WeChat brush Weibo have to hang a heat sink back clip... Of course, consumers do not have to worry too much about the future mobile phone prices will be higher and higher. After all, our country has 618 and double 11, as long as you wait, I believe that everyone will be able to start the mobile phone of their choice at a diving price