At the beginning of this year, NXP, a leader in automotive electronic chips, took the lead in announcing a price increase for global microcontroller chips, stating that it would raise prices across multiple product lines starting from the previous quarter, with an increase of 6% for MCUs. The market expects potential shortages for the entire year.

Since 2017, the delivery times for products from many global MCU manufacturers have extended from four months to six months, with Japanese MCU manufacturers extending delivery times to as long as nine months. According to Taiwanese media reports, STMicroelectronics reported a significant increase in demand for automotive electronics in the second half of last year, leading to severe product shortages. Other IDM manufacturers, including Texas Instruments, Renesas, and NXP, have also experienced similar situations, with delivery times delayed by three months to half a year, prompting many downstream customers to switch orders to Taiwanese manufacturers, benefiting companies like Nuvoton.

The products in short supply from STMicroelectronics include 8-bit MCUs and Cortex M0/M3/M4, with delivery times still not improving as of the first quarter of this year. The industry believes that improvements will be difficult in the first half of this year. Additionally, Taiwanese media pointed out that Apple's new iPhone models in 2018 will fully adopt 3D sensing technology, and STMicroelectronics, being one of the few suppliers and an IDM manufacturer, will inevitably continue to squeeze MCU production capacity.

According to market semiconductor intelligence data, the global electronic product manufacturing industry was largely thriving last year, with even Japanese semiconductor manufacturers experiencing positive growth not seen in many years, driving up sales of IC chips and other electronic components. It is estimated that the global automotive electronics and IoT application demand will continue to explode and grow, and with silicon wafer factories operating at full capacity, the global MCU market is likely to face supply shortages throughout 2018.

IHS Markit senior analyst Liu Qing stated that some manufacturers and upstream fabs have already begun to increase product supply capacity since the second half of 2017, but it will still take two to three quarters for this new capacity to be fully released. Therefore, it is expected that the supply tightness will continue into the first half of 2018.