Shortage of production capacity superimposed consumption season big manufacturers increase the price of WiFi 6 chips

According to media reports, industry insiders say that major fabs may raise their bids again in the first quarter of 2022, and MediaTek, Ruiyu or Synchronize will increase the price of WiFi 6 chips by about 10% to reflect rising costs.

MediaTek and Ruiyu are the main suppliers of communication chips in Taiwan, and Ruiyu's WiFi product line accounts for the largest proportion of total revenue. Prior to this, MediaTek has twice revised its annual revenue outlook, benefiting from the accelerated penetration of 5G and WiFi 6, and the advent of the consumer electronics season, and multiple kinetic energy assists such as Internet of things smart devices, wireless Bluetooth headsets and tablet PC launches.

WiFi 6 chip, which is in the whirlpool of this price increase, is a kind of communication chip, which enables more devices to access the network without congestion. Ruiyu believes that the current market demand for WiFi 6 is still strong, and he is optimistic that the penetration rate of WiFi 6 chips in the PC market will reach 30% this year, and the router market penetration will reach 20%, which will further double next year. According to IDC data, global shipments of WiFi chips will reach 4.9 billion in 2022, accounting for more than 40% of the shipments of major interconnection programs.

From the point of view of the supply side, WiFi 6 chips rely on mature process wafers. However, the time for each major chip foundry to increase mature process capacity is generally set in 2023, resulting in the supply speed of WiFi chips far below the needs of the market. From the point of view of Broadcom, the leading manufacturer of communications chips in the world, the current delivery period is more than 52 weeks, and the price has been increased by more than 20%.

On the other hand, the chip shipments that chip design companies support WiFi 6 standard are still in the initial stage, and the WiFi 6 chips needed next year will be in short supply.

There is a serious mismatch between supply and demand of WiFi 6 chips, which reflects the magnificent demeanor of the whole WiFi 6 industry chain. China Telecom and China Mobile have launched a very large-scale collection of WiFi 6 products. According to Song Hui, an analyst at Huaxi Securities, the amount collected by operators' home gateways has exceeded 10 billion yuan. According to the current average price of home gateways, it is estimated that the home gateway market of the three major telecom operators will exceed 10 billion yuan in 2021, of which the WiFi 6 market is expected to reach 5 billion yuan.

According to the analysis, WiFi 6 takes the lead in supporting the upcoming Internet of everything and applications such as AR/VR and HD video that require higher bandwidth and access capacity, thus driving upgrading opportunities for the entire industry and bringing rapid development opportunities for the industry chain from chips to modules to applications.

Related beneficiaries include: upstream WiFi 6 chips and modules: this year, local manufacturers committed to the Internet of things WiFi 6 chips also spread good news one after another-in February this year, Broadcom Integration launched the Internet of things WiFi 6 chip, and obtained the WiFi 6 certification test of the WiFi Alliance. In April this year, Lexin Technology launched a RISC-V Internet of things chip that supports WiFi 6. Hengxuan Technology and Quanzhi Technology have also laid out WiFi chips. In addition, Zhuoshengwei's module product WiFi5-FEM has been mass-produced and WiFi 6-FEM has sent samples.

Terminal equipment: Ziguang shares, Xingwang Ruijie, Tianyi shares, Mercedes-Benz information, such as Mercedes-Benz Information, Tianyi shares, etc., due to the small volume, the organization is expected to be more flexible in terms of performance driven by collection.