According to TrendForce's newest research report, development momentum of advanced production processes has been dropping due to weakening demand in most end markets, including smartphones. Foundries face a severe challenge in 1Q19, and global foundry production revenue for the first quarter is expected to decline by around 16% compared to the same quarter 2018, arriving at 14.6 billion USD. TSMC, Samsung and GlobalFoundries take first, second and third place respectively in market shares, and although TSMC's market share reaches 48.1% , it suffers a near 18% decline in YoY growth.
According to the latest research by LEDinside, a divison of TrendForce, China's mainstream high- and mid-power LED package prices continue to drop in January 2019, although they have rather stabilized in February.
Global market research institute TrendForce points out in its latest Breakdown Analysis of China's Semiconductor Industry that, thanks to the large leap in demand of end markets such as those of new energy vehicles (NEVs) and industrial controls , as well as the stockouts and price hikes of several products such as MOSFET and IGBT, China's power semiconductor market has experienced a large growth of 12.76% to 259.1 billion RMB, with the discrete component market coming to a size of 187.4 billion RMB, a 14.7% increase from 2017; the power management IC (PMIC) market arrived at a size of 71.7 billion RMB, an 8% increase compared to 2017.
As smartphone markets become saturated, suppliers look to foldable phones as a potential demand-stimulating design. Samsung and Huawei etc. have put several concept phones on display in MWC 2019. WitsView, a division of TrendForce, holds that foldable phones are still in the stages of market-response observation and product-design adjustment, and predicts for them a meager smartphone market penetration rate of 0.1% in 2019. Foldable phones penetration rates will have to wait until more panel providers join the game and panel costs see significant improvements for a chance to rise above 1% in 2021, and accelerate past 3.4% in 2022.
The latest analysis of the PC DRAM market from DRAMeXchange, a division of TrendForce, finds that most contracts are now monthly deals rather than quarterly deals, with February even seeing a most unusual, large down-correction in prices. The current quarterly decline dropped from the originally projected 25% to nearly 30%, resulting in the sharpest decline in a single season since 2011.