According to the latest reports such as the Nikkei, Murata's main production base of MLCC has been infected with the new crown due to the outbreak of the new crown.
The target of this outbreak of cluster infection and the suspension of work is some floors of the Takefu Works factory under the jurisdiction of Fukui Murata Manufacturing. A total of 1,256 people have been quarantined.
Japan's epidemic is heating up rapidly
The spread of the Omicron variant has led to a rapid increase in the new crown epidemic in Japan. On January 16, the number of new diagnoses in Japan reached 25,658, and the number of single-day diagnoses exceeded 25,000 for the second consecutive day. Among them, 4,172 people were newly diagnosed in Tokyo on the 16th, and the average number of confirmed cases in the last week was about 2,848, which was 4.3 times that of the previous week (about 664). The number of infected people in 8 regions including Osaka Prefecture, Kyoto Prefecture, Hyogo Prefecture, Fukuoka Prefecture, Kumamoto West, Wakayama Prefecture, Hiroshima Prefecture, and Tottori Prefecture all set a record for the highest number of infections in a single day in the two years since the outbreak of the epidemic.
In order to prevent the spread of the epidemic, Fukui Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd., in cooperation with local health centers and partner companies, conducts autonomous PCR tests on a scale of about 1,000 people per day for all employees.
Regarding this incident, Murata said, "I apologize for causing trouble to many people." The company also said the shutdown of some production lines had little impact on overall production and shipments.
In fact, in August 2021, the Takefu Works also had a cluster infection. At that time, Murata shut down all production lines for one week. At that time, Japanese media believed that Murata was the global MLCC leader, holding 40% of the global market share. The Takefu Works mainly produces MLCCs for smartphones and is Murata's main base for MLCCs in Japan. Some people in the industry chain believe that a short-term shutdown may have a certain degree of impact on the production of electronic products such as smartphones.
Semiconductor Industry Emergency Strengthening Program
As we all know, the Japanese semiconductor industry occupies a leading position in the world. In 1988, Japan's market share in the global semiconductor market was as high as 50%, but in 2019, it has fallen to about 10%. Japan's dominant areas mainly include three industrial chain links. One is semiconductor materials. Japanese semiconductor materials account for about 60% of the global semiconductor material market. Among the 19 key materials in the entire semiconductor field, 14 of them account for more than 50% of the world's production capacity. Such as high-purity hydrogen fluoride, photoresist and fluorinated polyamide and other materials, Japan has a monopoly advantage.
The second is in the field of semiconductor equipment. Japan accounts for nearly 40% of the global semiconductor equipment market. Among the world's 15 largest semiconductor equipment manufacturers, there are about 7 in Japan, and Japanese semiconductor production equipment accounts for about 30% of the overall share. There are three major items in Japan that occupy the dominant monopoly position: cleaning, drying equipment and glue-spraying and developing machines.
The third is the field of IC design. Japan has the world's leading advantages in the fields of memory semiconductors, logic semiconductors, analog semiconductors (including sensors) and power semiconductors and occupies a large market share. For example, Sony's image sensor chip ranks first in the world; Renesas Electronics has a leading edge in automotive semiconductors and general-purpose semiconductors; Japan's Mitsubishi ranks first in the world in the field of IGBT modules; Toshiba Semiconductor's NAND memory maintains a leading position in the world.
It is understood that the size of the global semiconductor market is about 440 billion US dollars in 2020, and Japanese companies are in NAND memory (market size of 57.1 billion US dollars), microprocessors (17.3 billion US dollars) and CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) image sensors ($16.6 billion) sector ranks among the top.
On November 15, 2021, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan announced the "Semiconductor Industry Emergency Strengthening Plan" to revitalize Japan's semiconductor industry, hoping to attract manufacturers to build advanced semiconductor factories in Japan through financial assistance, and at the same time plan to revitalize Japan's existing old semiconductor factories. Japan's declining semiconductor market share will be boosted by providing assistance in equipment upgrades and working with the United States to develop a new generation of semiconductors.
The goal of the "Semiconductor Industry Emergency Strengthening Plan" is to increase the semiconductor revenue of Japanese companies to 13 trillion yen (about 727.05 billion yuan) in 2030, which will be about three times the level of 2020.
With the rise and fall of demand-side home appliance companies, Japan's semiconductor industry also rises and falls. The demand side related to automobiles, electronics, and IT has been scattered all over the world. Combining these demand-side trends to develop products and gain dominance in new markets will become the conditions for the Japanese semiconductor industry to win in the fierce global competition.
Japanese companies are reducing their reliance on China
On the other hand, Japanese semiconductor manufacturers are trying to reduce their dependence on China. Nikkei recently reported that Murata had previously relied on Greater China for more than half of its revenue, and this share is expected to decline over time as the company looks forward to future growth in the Indo-Pacific.
Murata said in November 2021 that it would open a new factory in Thailand in October 2023. In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Murata President Nakajima said the new plant will eventually be expanded to the size of the Wuxi plant for the production of multilayer ceramic capacitors required for consumer electronics.
"There is a possibility of events beyond our control," such as Washington's technology ban on China, Nakajima said. "Our supply chain has to diversify," he said, adding that major customers like Apple were also diversifying away from China. Murata once symbolized enduring economic ties between Asia's two largest economies, but the U.S.-China trade rift has made industry leaders like Nakajima nervous.
Another top Japanese chipmaker, Renesas Electronics, is also concerned that it could be banned from supplying to the Chinese market, which accounts for 22 percent of its sales, because of the U.S.-China trade war. In 2021, Renesas acquired Britain's Dialog Semiconductor for $6 billion in an attempt to diversify its technology base into Europe, potentially using European technology to supply chips to China.
No country in the world can master all the links in the semiconductor industry. Every country is a link in the global industrial chain. Problems in any link will have an impact on the global supply chain. Previously, Southeast Asia was becoming a destination for some global manufacturing transfers, but a worsening of the epidemic will interrupt this process. Under the cover of the epidemic, a stable supply chain is particularly important, and China has withstood various stress tests and has made outstanding contributions to the stability of the supply chain.
