The Japanese government on May 23 announced to impose export restrictions on 23 items of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, effective July 23. Although the list includes various equipment, Japan is more likely to control the export of photolithography or thin film deposition equipment for advanced processes.

First-quarter 2023 smartphone application processor (AP) shipments to China-based smartphone brand vendors amounted to 120 million units, plunging 12.1% from the prior quarter and 32.6% from the prior year due to ongoing smartphone demand shrinkage on top of vendors' inventory adjustment and slow season.

Global smartphone application processor (AP) shipments are expected to come to 1.114 billion units in 2023, down 11.8% on year, mainly due to declining smartphone shipments and slow AP inventory depletion.

The four leading foundries in Taiwan - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), United Microelectronics (UMC), Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing (PSMC) and Vanguard International Semiconductor (VIS) - together generated a total of US$89.4 billion in revenues in 2022, soaring 31% from a year ago. However, they still experienced the first on-quarter revenue decline since the COVID-19 pandemic in fourth-quarter 2022.

China-based semiconductor manufacturers, in the wake of geopolitical risks, are expected to keep up with their capacity expansion strategies going into 2023 with a good number of projects already in construction.

Application processor (AP) shipments to China-based smartphone vendors amounted to 137 million units in the fourth quarter of 2022, down 24% sequentially and 20.3% on year, and will experience another double-digit decline in the first quarter of 2023.

Logic IC manufacturing process technologies have been making rapid advances with lithography technologies and machines, transistor architecture and power delivery network (PDN) design all playing vital roles in driving the advance.

US government's Export Administration Regulations (EAR) are expected to set back China's progress in AI and supercomputer research and weaken its technological and military strength which otherwise could be empowered by its semiconductor advances.

Global foundry revenue is set to reach US$137.2 billion in 2022, soaring 25.8%, and the brilliant performance is a result of price hikes, customer long-term agreements (LTA) and capacity expansions.

Shipments of application processors (APs) used in smartphones released by China-based brands went up 10.2% sequentially, but down 19.4% on year to reach 199.5 million units in the third quarter of 2022.

Soaring silicon carbide (SiC) demand from electric vehicles (EV) is leading to a tight supply of 6-inch SiC wafers, of which the cost will unlikely go down.

The four leading Taiwan-based foundries - TSMC, UMC, PSMC and VIS - together are on course to generate revenues exceeding US$90 billion in 2022, soaring 31.8% from a year ago.