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Since last year, the consumer electronics market has been in a slump, with the chip supply and demand situation reversing from "scrambling for chips" to "reducing inventory," making the chip industry "chilly."

Entering 2023, the winter of the chip industry continues, and the industry as a whole is still in the bottoming-out phase. According to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics (WSTS) forecast, the chip market size in 2023 will decrease by 4.1% year-on-year, down to $556.5 billion, marking a negative growth after four years.

Recently, major chip manufacturers have released their latest quarterly financial reports. As the performance data is gradually released, how is the 2023 semiconductor market evolving? When will the chip industry be able to emerge from the "darkest moment"? Are there differences in the situations and feelings of manufacturers at different levels of the industry chain?

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We will understand the answers behind these questions through the latest quarterly financial reports of major semiconductor companies.

Consumer electronics chips show no signs of improvement.

The PC market has encountered a significant decline in demand, with shipments hitting a new low in more than 10 years, and the performance of the two major CPU manufacturers, AMD and Intel, is not very good.

• Intel: Revenue hits a historical low since 2010

Not long ago, Intel released its financial report for the first quarter of the 2023 fiscal year, showing that the first-quarter revenue was $11.7 billion, a 36% decrease from the $18.4 billion in the same period last year, setting a historical low since 2010, and a loss for two consecutive quarters; the net loss of $2.8 billion is a staggering 134% decrease year-on-year.

The poor performance of various businesses also reflects the challenges faced by Intel from the side.

Taking Intel's Client Computing Group (CCG), which includes PCs and laptops, as an example, the first-quarter revenue reached $5.8 billion, a 38% year-on-year decrease. On the one hand, this is due to the continuous weakness of market demand, with IDC estimating that global PC shipments fell by nearly 30% in the first quarter of 2023; on the other hand, it is also due to the ongoing changes in the processor market, with Apple switching to its own chips and AMD catching up, causing Intel, which used to dominate the field, to be impacted.On the other hand, the demand for chips in data centers has declined in recent months, further pressuring Intel's performance. At the same time, cloud giants such as Google and Amazon have moved towards designing their own chips; NVIDIA's CPU is accelerating iterations; the Arm camp is eyeing the market, and under the interlocking factors, Intel's Data Center and AI business (DCAI) achieved a revenue of $3.7 billion in the first quarter, a significant drop of 39%.

A series of numbers make Intel's financial report rather bleak. As for the future trend of the industry, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger believes that Intel will move towards a moderate rebound.

The demand from the terminal market is expected to emerge from the doldrums, which may become an interpretation of Intel's confidence. In the PC field, Intel believes that inventory adjustments are basically carried out as expected, and by the end of the second quarter, the market will be at a healthy inventory level, and the PC market is expected to achieve a sales volume of about 270 million units in 2023.

In the server field, Intel expects the overall market size to decline year-on-year in the first half of 2023, while a moderate recovery is expected in the second half.

The demand trends in industries such as industrial, automotive, and infrastructure are relatively strong, and Intel believes that businesses such as PSG, IFS, and MBLY will continue to maintain a strong growth momentum and will achieve year-on-year growth in 2023.

AMD: The first revenue decline since 2019

After Intel announced a record quarterly loss, AMD was also significantly impacted by the ongoing downturn in the personal computer (PC) market.

Recently, AMD released its financial report for the first quarter ending on April 1. In the first quarter of 2023, AMD's revenue was $5.353 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 9%; the net loss was $139 million, a significant drop of 118% compared to the $786 million profit in the same period last year.

This is the first time AMD's revenue has declined since 2019, with the Ryzen processor becoming the hardest hit, further highlighting the plight of a significant decline in PC sales.

Breaking it down, including desktop and notebook PC processors and chipsets, AMD's client division achieved a revenue of $739 million in the first quarter, a dramatic year-on-year decrease of 65.2%; the operating profit has also turned from a profit of $692 million in the same period last year to a loss of $172 million.In the Q2 revenue forecast, AMD expects revenue of $5.3 billion, with a fluctuation of $300 million, between $5 billion and $5.6 billion. According to the median, it will be a year-on-year decline of 19.1%, which means that the performance in the second quarter will still decline.

However, AMD said that the worst is about to pass, similar to the previous statement by Intel's CEO. AMD CEO Dr. Lisa Su said: "With the strengthening of the PC and server markets, as well as the increase in our new products, we are confident about the growth in the second half of the year."

Gartner data shows that in the first quarter of this year, global PC shipments fell by 30% year-on-year to 55.2 million units. Although the weak PC business continues to hit chip manufacturers, some industry views believe that the PC market may have hit bottom.

In addition to PCs, smartphone shipments have also fallen to an all-time low.

· Qualcomm: The demand for mobile phones is still declining

In February this year, Qualcomm also released a "cold" financial report, revealing the financial report for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2023, with revenue of $9.463 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 12%; net profit of $2.235 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 34%.

Specifically, Qualcomm's chip business QCT revenue was $7.89 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 11%, of which mobile chip revenue was $5.75 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 18%; the technology licensing department QTL business revenue was $1.52 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 16%, and the main source of the department's revenue is the collection of cellular patent usage rights.

The reason for the slowdown in performance growth is directly related to the sluggish performance of the chip business QCT and the technology licensing department QTL.It is not difficult to understand that in the context of the tightening of the smartphone dividend, Qualcomm's performance decline is understandable.

But this is not the end. Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon said that the demand for mobile phones continues to decline, and the expectation that the channel inventory will continue to grow will continue at least in the first half of this year. Especially in the mid-to-low-end mobile phone market, the demand is particularly weak.

Recently, Qualcomm released the financial report for the second quarter of the fiscal year 2023. The revenue for the second quarter was $9.275 billion, a decline of 17% compared with $11.164 billion in the same period last year; the net profit was $1.704 billion, a decline of 42% compared with $2.934 billion in the same period last year.

· MediaTek: Performance hits a low point in the past nine quarters

On April 28, the chip design giant MediaTek announced the financial report for the first quarter of 2023.

Affected by customer inventory adjustments and weak demand. MediaTek's revenue for the first quarter of 2023 was NT$95.652 billion, a decrease of 11.6% from the previous quarter and a decrease of 33% year-on-year; the after-tax net profit was NT$16.874 billion, a decrease of 8.7% from the previous quarter and a decrease of 49.3% year-on-year, hitting a low point in the past nine quarters.

MediaTek said that the inventory of customers and channels has continued to decline, but the consumption momentum of some consumer electronics products, such as mobile phones, is still lower than expected. The revenue from mobile phones in MediaTek's Q1 2023 accounted for 46%, a decrease of 20% from the previous quarter and a decrease of 41% year-on-year.

In terms of inventory, MediaTek's inventory turnover days have not decreased but increased, reaching 128 days in the first quarter, higher than the previous quarter's 126 days and the same period last year's 105 days.According to data disclosed by IDC, global smartphone shipments in 2022 reached 1.21 billion units, a year-on-year decline of 11.3%, marking the lowest record since 2013. As we step into 2023, the chill in the mobile phone market has not dissipated. A Canalys report shows that the global smartphone market fell by 12% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2023, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of decline.

In light of this, MediaTek CEO Rick Tsai stated that although the visibility of end-market demand is limited and the inventory of customers and channels has continued to decline, the consumption momentum of some consumer electronics products, such as mobile phones, is still below expectations. It is expected that with the gradual reduction of industry chain inventory, revenue is expected to improve in the second half of the year. The global smartphone shipments in 2023 may further decline to 1.1 billion units, but it is expected that mobile phone sales will start to rebound in the second quarter and the second half of the year.

MediaTek's current revenue is still mainly derived from mobile phone chips. Affected by the continuous inventory adjustment of the overall industry, coupled with the plateau phase of the 5G upgrade wave, the price competition with Qualcomm has become more pronounced, which also squeezes MediaTek's profit space.

In response to the market's concern about the price competition of mobile phone chips, Tsai replied that this kind of price competition is mainly in entry-level mobile phones. As MediaTek mentioned a few quarters ago, they believe that the "bottom-fishing competition" style of pricing is not an effective strategy. It cannot effectively stimulate terminal demand, nor can it significantly change market share. Therefore, whether in the past or the future, MediaTek's consistent strategy is to achieve a balance between market share, revenue, and profit, rather than focusing solely on price competition.

Overall, as we enter 2023, the shift in the consumer electronics market is something many people are looking forward to. However, for Q1 alone, whether it is the PC market or the smartphone field, the performance of the continuous cold wind is still ongoing, which directly drags down the processor chip market.

Memory chip prices continue to fall, with a gradual recovery in the second half of the year?

At the same time, the memory chip market is still falling. Samsung Electronics' chip division has recorded the largest loss in history, with operating profit plummeting by 95%; SK Hynix's Q1 revenue decreased by 58.1% year-on-year, and the loss expanded to 3.4 trillion won.

On April 27, Samsung announced its financial report for the first quarter of 2023, with revenue of 63.75 trillion won, a year-on-year decrease of 18%, and a sequential decrease of 10%. In addition, the operating profit was 64.02 billion won, a year-on-year plunge of 95%, the lowest level in 14 years. Moreover, Samsung also changed its past statement of "not reducing production," indicating that it would adjust the output of memory chips.

Samsung stated that the reason is the uncertain global macroeconomic environment, continuous inventory adjustments, and overall demand decline. It is expected that the recovery of memory chip demand in the second quarter will be limited due to the weak consumer market and more conservative investment in servers by major data center companies. At the same time, Samsung's chip business will focus on large-capacity servers and mobile products, and it expects that "the market will gradually recover in the second half of the year, and global demand will rebound."

The day before Samsung released its financial report, another major South Korean memory chip giant, SK Hynix, released its financial report for the first quarter of 2023. The company achieved revenue of 5.09 trillion won, a sequential decrease of 34% and a year-on-year decrease of 58%; the net loss was about 2.59 trillion won, and the previous quarter's net loss was about 3.72 trillion won, with losses for two consecutive quarters. In this quarter, SK Hynix's operating loss reached 3.40 trillion won, setting a record for the company's single-quarter operating loss.Hynix's Chief Financial Officer, Kim Woo-Jin, believes that the memory chip market is still in a severe state, but it seems to be bottoming out. He expects sales to rebound in the current quarter, and the memory chip market is expected to improve from the second half of this year. Hynix stated that after a series of production cuts in the memory industry, the level of customer chip inventory decreased throughout the first quarter, indicating that the production cut measures that began last year are gradually taking hold.

In addition to the two major South Korean memory chip manufacturers, the American memory chip manufacturer Micron reported that its revenue in the second quarter of the fiscal year 2023 was $3.69 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 53%. This is the most severe quarterly loss in Micron's history in the past 20 years. Micron's CEO, Sanjay Mehrotra, said that "the industry will face the most severe recession in the past 13 years."

Since the second half of 2022, the demand for memory chip market has continued to decline, and the shipment price has plummeted. TrendForce previously judged that in the first quarter of 2023, the overall selling price of global DRAM products continued to decline by 13%-18%; for NAND, it continued to decline by 10%-15% in the first quarter. The agency recently updated its judgment, and the DRAM price will continue to decline by 10%-15% in the second quarter, and there is still no sign of a stop; the NAND price will continue to decline by 5%-10%, and whether it can stop falling depends on the demand in the second half of the year and whether the original factory has a larger scale of production cuts.

However, from the feedback of the terminal market, since the price of memory chips has almost reached the cost price of many original factories, several major memory chip original factories have taken measures to refuse to reduce the price of chips. According to Taiwan's Electronic Times, Micron has officially notified dealers that from May, DRAM and NAND Flash will no longer accept inquiries below the current market price; Samsung has also notified the sales agency that it will no longer sell DRAM chips at a price lower than the current price.

From the latest financial reports released by Samsung, Hynix, and Micron, there has been a preliminary conclusion on the market situation of memory chips within the year and in the medium and long term, that is, driven by the gradual increase in sales volume, the demand for memory chips may continue to be sluggish in the second quarter, and then gradually pick up in the second half of the year, and may emerge from the trough later this year.

The automotive track has become the only growth point.

When the cold wind of consumer electronics and memory chips is still blowing, another track in the semiconductor industry - automotive chips, is still strong.

Recently, Texas Instruments released its financial report for the first quarter of 2023, with a revenue of $4.379 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 11%, and net profit decreased by 22% year-on-year. Except for the automotive business, the revenue of other businesses all decreased. This is also the quarter with the largest revenue decline in the past ten quarters for Texas Instruments.

Dave Pahl, Vice President of Texas Instruments and head of the investor relations department, pointed out at the financial report meeting that the demand for all terminal markets except automotive has shown a quarter-on-quarter decline: the industrial market is roughly flat; consumer electronics continue to show a general weakness, down about 30%; the decline in communication equipment is in the middle of the double digits, and the enterprise system fell by about 30%; only automotive chips maintain a growth trend, with a quarter-on-quarter increase in revenue of 4%.At the same time, Texas Instruments' inventory days in the first quarter increased by 38 days quarter-on-quarter to 195 days, and the inventory amount increased by $531 million quarter-on-quarter to $3.3 billion, further indicating a decline in market demand, leading to a significant increase in inventory.

Texas Instruments stated that market demand will remain weak at least in the short term. The revenue for the second quarter is expected to be between $4.17 billion and $4.53 billion, a decrease of 16.5% compared to the same period last year, which is worse than the 15% decline expected by analysts.

Infineon's revenue in the first fiscal quarter of 2023 increased by 25% year-on-year, with the automotive product business growing strongly by 35% compared to the same period last year.

Therefore, even though demand for smartphones, computers, and data centers is weak, Infineon achieved growth in both profits and revenue in the first fiscal quarter of 2023 due to strong sales of automotive and industrial chips.

In addition, Infineon stated that as electric vehicles and assisted driving technology continue to develop, customers are now more willing to sign capacity reservation agreements or long-term orders to ensure semiconductor supply. In the 2023 fiscal year, the capacity for Infineon's automotive business products has been fully booked.

On May 2, ON Semiconductor announced the first quarter financial report for 2023, which exceeded market expectations.

The first quarter revenue of ON Semiconductor was $1.96 billion, a slight increase of 0.76% year-on-year, better than the analysts' general expectations; the net profit was $462 million, a decrease of 12.96% year-on-year.

ON Semiconductor CEO Hassane El-Khoury said that despite the uncertain global economic environment, the first quarter financial results still exceeded expectations. Among them, the revenue related to silicon carbide increased by nearly double quarter-on-quarter, mainly because the production exceeded the previous internal plan, and the year-on-year growth rate of ADAS and energy infrastructure business revenue also reached 50%.

In addition, the quarterly financial reports of ST and NXP also show that the net income of the automotive and industrial sectors is better than expected and continues to strengthen. The continuous growth of the automotive business has made up for the decline in other businesses, driving its overall performance to exceed expectations.On the other side, driven by the automotive and industrial businesses, ADI's performance in Q1 2023 continued to reach new heights, with a year-on-year increase of 21%. Among them, the automotive business contributed 22% of ADI's revenue, reaching $718 million, setting a new revenue record, and the revenue growth rate of 29% was higher than that of the industrial, communication, consumer and other departments.

Not only traditional automotive chip manufacturers, but also Intel, which has seen a continuous decline in its main businesses, has only Mobileye benefit from the growth of the automotive terminal market, achieving a record increase in revenue, with a growth of 16%, becoming a rare warm color in Intel's financial report for this quarter;

Qualcomm's automotive chip business revenue in the first quarter increased by 58% year-on-year, reaching $456 million. However, the scale of the automotive chip business is relatively small, and it still failed to make up for the decline in revenue from the mobile chip business. But the strong growth of new businesses has at least let Wall Street see a glimmer of new hope.

MediaTek reiterated its diversified layout strategy, and the automotive products it has had in the past few years have shown strong growth. The recently announced Dimensity Auto Tianyi automotive platform aims at the growth opportunities in the fields of smart cockpits, vehicle networking, intelligent driving platforms, and key components. Cai Lixing said at the legal statement meeting: "We will definitely transfer resources to the automotive and computing fields very quickly, because these fields will provide us with growth in the next three to five years."

From the financial reports of the above manufacturers, it can be seen that the development potential of automotive electronics is huge, becoming one of the few growth tracks in the current semiconductor downturn cycle.

Morgan Stanley pointed out that the global automotive electronics market was about $150 billion in 2018, and it is expected to grow explosively to $287 billion by 2025. The main reasons are the continuous increase in the penetration rate of electric vehicles and the increase in the usage rate of ADAS. It is expected that by 2025, up to 35%-45% of the material cost of electric vehicles will be automotive electronic components, which is 2.5 times that of traditional cars, and the overall demand for automotive chips is expected to grow.

The author introduced in the previous article "Automotive chip giants are expanding production on a large scale", including Infineon, Texas Instruments, Renesas Electronics, NXP, STMicroelectronics, and ON Semiconductor and other chip giants' in-depth layout and planning for the automotive track.

The most cold season for wafer foundry?

·TSMC: Lower expectations, end the growth momentum of 13 consecutive years

TSMC's performance for the first quarter of 2023 shows that the revenue was 508.63 billion New Taiwan dollars, a year-on-year increase of 3.6%, and a sequential decrease of 18.7%.From the performance of the five major application categories of chips, namely smartphones, high-performance computing (HPC), the Internet of Things (IoT), automotive electronics, and consumer electronics, only automotive electronics saw a sequential growth of 5%, while the rest all decreased compared to the previous quarter. Among them, the revenue of smartphone chip categories decreased by 27% month-on-month, and HPC decreased by 14%.

It is evident that as consumers and businesses are tightening their budgets to cope with soaring inflation and the potential global economic recession, TSMC is also striving to deal with the persistently weak demand for electronic products.

Looking at TSMC's revenue in March 2023, TSMC's revenue was NT$145.408 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 15.4%. The last time TSMC's monthly revenue fell year-on-year was in May 2019, and this time it is a decline again after 45 months.

It is understood that due to the large number of orders cut by companies such as Apple and MediaTek, coupled with conservative orders from companies such as AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Intel, TSMC's capacity utilization rate continues to decline.

TSMC stated that the company's revenue performance in 2023 was affected by the overall economic downturn and adjustments made by customers due to weak demand in the terminal market. After entering the second quarter, it is expected that TSMC's overall performance will continue to be affected by customers' inventory adjustments. At the same time, TSMC has revised down its revenue forecast for the whole year of 2023, changing from a slight increase to a decline of 1%-6%, ending the growth momentum that lasted for 13 consecutive years.

Some analysts are worried that TSMC's revision of its outlook or capital expenditure plan will mean that the industry's downturn will last longer. However, other analysts added that TSMC's performance may rebound as early as the third quarter, corresponding to the improved quarterly outlook predicted by Apple, Nvidia, and AMD.

In terms of chips, according to the financial report, 5-nanometer process chips accounted for 31% of the company's wafer sales amount in the first quarter of 2023; 7-nanometer process shipments accounted for 20% of the total wafer sales amount for the quarter. TSMC stated that overall, the revenue of advanced processes reached 51% of the total wafer sales amount for the quarter.

TSMC CEO CC Wei said that the 3-nanometer process has been scheduled to be mass-produced in the second half of the year, and there is already a strong demand for N3 chips for many years to come. In addition, TSMC also plans to start mass production of 2-nanometer chips with GAA process technology in 2025.

· UMC: Weak terminal demand, strong growth in automotive chip

UMC announced its operational report for the first quarter of 2023, with a total revenue of NT$54.2 billion, a sequential decline of 20.1%, and a year-on-year decrease of 14.5%.The General Manager of UMC, Wang Shi, stated: "In the first quarter of 2023, as customers continued to digest inventory, UMC's business was affected by the weak demand for wafers. As previously announced, the wafer shipment volume decreased by 17.5% quarter-on-quarter, and the manufacturing capacity utilization rate dropped to 70%."

Wang Shi emphasized, "Despite the weak demand in the main end markets, the automotive and industrial products continued to grow in this quarter. In particular, its automotive business accounted for 17% of the total sales in the first quarter. Driven by automotive electronics and autonomous driving, the content of automotive ICs is expected to continue to increase, and automotive products will become the main source of revenue and growth momentum for UMC in the future."

UMC pointed out, "Entering the second quarter of 2023, due to the overall demand outlook remaining weak, it is expected that customers will continue to adjust inventory, and the wafer shipment volume is expected to remain flat. At the same time, the company continues to take strict cost control measures to ensure profitability in the short-term business cycle."

• Intel IFS: The biggest X factor facing Intel

The wafer foundry service business group IFS, which is highly expected by Intel and carries the strategic goal of IDM 2.0, still performed below expectations, with a revenue of $118 million in the first quarter, a year-on-year decrease of 24%.

Some people believe that the foundry business is the biggest X factor facing Intel.

Because, on the one hand, the cornerstone of Intel's XPU strategy cannot be separated from the support of advanced processes; on the other hand, to catch up in advanced processes, the reliance is still on the step-by-step progress of the nodes and the guarantee of customer orders.

Gelsinger is full of confidence, mentioning that Intel is steadily advancing the four-year plan of five process nodes, catching up with competitors in process performance in 2024, and achieving an undisputed leading position with the Intel 18A process technology in 2025.

Intel steadily advances the four-year plan of five process nodes:

Intel 7: Mass production has been achievedIntel 4: Officially and rapidly increasing the production of Meteor Lake, Intel's new generation of Core processors (Meteor Lake) is scheduled to be launched in the second half of 2023 as planned.

Intel 3, 20A, and 18A: Progressing as planned.

Kissinger further emphasized that Intel will expand its IFS foundry customer base, achieving more product iterations in 2023 through advanced packaging technology, Intel 16, Intel 3, and Intel 18A processes.

However, there are still many uncertainties in Intel's foundry business, such as the inevitable delay in the acquisition of Tower; the construction start of the factory in Germany has been postponed; whether the construction of the foundry ecosystem can be smoothly advanced; and whether it can attract enough customers to fill its new wafer factory's huge production capacity to make operations profitable?

Under the current trend and situation, it will still take a few years to determine whether Intel can regain global competitiveness.

• SMIC: Expected revenue decline in double digits in 2023

SMIC stated that the industry cycle is still at the bottom in the first half of the year, and the impact of external uncertain factors remains complex. Regarding the full-year performance in 2023, SMIC said that based on the premise of a relatively stable external environment, the company expects a low double-digit decline in sales revenue in 2023 compared to the previous year, with a gross margin of around 20%; depreciation increased by more than 20% year-on-year, and capital expenditure is roughly the same as in 2022; the increase in monthly production capacity by the end of the year is similar to that of 2022.

At the same time, SMIC has been promoting the construction of four major factories, SMIC Shenzhen, SMIC Lingang, SMIC Capital, and SMIC Xiqing, in recent years. After the completion of these four factories, SMIC's production capacity is bound to increase significantly. SMIC also stated that during the continuous investment process, the gross margin is under the pressure of high depreciation, and the company will always aim for continuous profitability, strive to grasp the rhythm of capacity expansion, and ensure a certain level of gross margin.

Counterpoint estimates that the global logic foundry industry's sales volume in 2022 increased by 27% year-on-year, but weak consumer demand and high IC inventory bring huge risks to 2023. It is expected that the global foundry semiconductor revenue will decrease by 5%-7% in 2023, and the average capacity utilization rate in this quarter is expected to drop to about 75% of the 2022 level.

Regarding the market trend for the full year of 2023, the industry said that the industry cycle is still at the bottom in the first half of the year, and the impact of external uncertain factors remains complex.Semiconductor Equipment, Unfazed by Market Chill

Finally, let's look at the semiconductor equipment market.

Recently, an article titled "Semiconductor Equipment, the Only Bright Spot?" from Semiconductor Industry Observer introduced the equipment market. The semiconductor equipment industry may be one of the few growth tracks in the entire semiconductor industry chain. In the first quarter of 2023, the performance of equipment manufacturers both domestically and internationally has achieved varying degrees of growth.

However, for semiconductor equipment suppliers, they still face the unfavorable factor of macroeconomic slowdown in the short term, and international semiconductor equipment suppliers are also affected by the adverse impact of export bans.

Looking at the future expectations, in the short term, the consensus is that market demand is weak and continues to be sluggish. According to SEMI's forecast, the global semiconductor equipment market size will decrease by 16% to $91.2 billion in 2023.

But in the long term, as the cornerstone supporting the development of the electronics industry, semiconductor equipment is the most extensive market size and the most strategically valuable link in the entire semiconductor industry chain, and is expected to be optimistic in the long run. It is expected that with the end of inventory correction, the semiconductor equipment market will show a significant rebound in 2024, with a market size of $107.16 billion, and is expected to grow by 18% year-on-year.

In conclusion, the market demand for consumer electronics, memory chips, and others still does not see a turnaround, and the possibility of recovery in the short term is not great; the automotive chip market continues to grow, becoming one of the few revenue growth points for diversified companies.

The wafer foundry industry is affected by upstream demand, with order reduction, utilization rate decline, and downward adjustment of annual revenue expectations; while equipment manufacturers, as the "shovel seller" in the semiconductor industry chain, still seem to be making a lot of money.