The proportion of memory chips becoming semiconductors in the most prosperous race track is expected to accelerate.

Driven by the economic recovery and the transformation of the digital economy, memory chips are growing into the most prosperous sub-track in the semiconductor industry.

According to the estimates of the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics Organization ((WSTS)), the global semiconductor output value will reach US $527.2 billion this year, an increase of 19.7%, while the output value of memory chips will grow by 31.7%, the highest growth rate. WSTS expects that in 2022, global semiconductor output is expected to reach a further US $573.4 billion, which will grow by another 8.8%, while memory chip output will grow by 17.4%, which will still be the highest.

The tight situation of supply and demand continues until the Q3 industry enters the growth cycle.

Since last year, 5G, consumer electronics, AI, Internet of things and other markets have developed rapidly. Under the superimposed epidemic of home-office and distance learning, storage demand has increased significantly, promoting the sustained growth of the memory industry.

DRAM and NAND Flash are the two fastest growing segments. The downstream of the DRAM memory chip is mainly mobile, including mobile phones and laptops, accounting for more than 60%. NAND Flash is usually used to store large amounts of data. Its downstream application areas are enterprises and data centers with large-scale data storage requirements.

Due to the tight production capacity of the superimposed wafers in the downstream demand, both products are in the cycle of rising prices. According to market research firm TrendForce Jibang Consulting, the spot price of DRAM in the first quarter of this year has increased by 1823% compared with the same period last year, while, NAND Flash has increased by 50.10%.

In the context of tight supply and demand, a number of institutions predict that price increases will continue.

TrendForce recently released a report saying that due to the active inventory of terminal buyers in the first half of this year, the inventory of the original memory factory is at a low level. The average inventory of the original factory of DRAM is only 3-4 weeks, while the average inventory of; NAND Flash suppliers is 4-5 weeks.

In the face of the fact that server customers want to strengthen their purchasing power in the third quarter, there is no need for the original factory to quote prices for all kinds of memory products, so TrendForce estimates that the tight situation of supply and demand will continue into the third quarter, and the overall DRAM price of Q3 will continue to rise by 30.8%. NAND Flash will be affected by the rising demand of enterprise SSD and wafer, and the overall price increase will be raised from the original 30.8% to 50.010%.

In the long run, market research firm IC Insights predicts that the global memory chip market will remain high for four years, and the global memory chip market will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10.6% from 2020 to 2025. Memory chip sales are expected to exceed $180 billion in 2022, surpassing the all-time high in 2018 and reaching the next cycle peak in 2023.

The localization proportion of storage industry chain is expected to accelerate.

According to a research report by Chuancai Securities, the size of China's memory chip market has increased from $4.52 billion in 2015 to $18.36 billion in 2020, and is expected to exceed $50 billion in 2024.

However, the participation of domestic enterprises in the memory field of our country is very low. As the largest market of memory chips in the world, the localization rate of our country is less than 5%. In the field of semiconductor memory manufacturing, only some IC wafer foundry and closed test manufacturers provide a small amount of services.

At present, China has issued a series of industrial policies, such as the National Strategic emerging Development Industry Development Plan of the 13th five-year Plan, the outline of National Informatization Development Strategy, made in China 2025, and so on. encourage and support the development of the entire semiconductor storage industry. The National Integrated Circuit Industry Fund has repeatedly stressed support for the development of leading enterprises in the integrated circuit industry, and will make greater efforts to support the development of integrated circuit manufacturing and characteristic integrated circuits, with emphasis on promoting projects in the storage industry.

Sun can, an analyst at the agency, said that driven by policy benefits at the national level, the increase in the proportion of localization of the storage industry chain will continue to accelerate.

Specifically, at the DRAM chip manufacturing end, founder Securities analyst Chen Hang released a research report on April 3, saying that in the short term, the greatest hope for China's independent replacement of DRAM is Hefei Changxin; Zhaoyi Innovation is the related party of Hefei Changxin, which is expanding from the smaller market scale of NOR Flash to DRAM. The GDQ2BFAA series, its first private brand 4GbDDR4 product, is now in mass production, which marks the official entry of Zhaoyi Innovation into the mainstream storage market of DRAM; Ziguang is a leading integrated circuit design company in China, mainly engaged in integrated circuit business and crystal business, and the mature DDR3 module series products make the company a major supplier of domestic DRAM memory.

In terms of NAND Flash, Changjiang Storage has announced that 128layer NAND Flash products have been successfully developed; Beijing Junzheng's memory chip products include SRAM, DRAM, NOR Flash and NAND Flash.

In the packaging process, Shenzhen Technology closed testing products mainly include DDR3, DDR4,LPDDR3, LPDDR4, eMCP, USB, eMMC, ePOP, SSD, 3DNAND and Fingerprint fingerprint chips, and have wBGA, FBGA, LGA and other closed testing technology.