Samsung, the world's largest smartphone maker, is not immune to market pressure. Samsung is preparing to slash its production forecast, with smartphone production falling by 30 million units in 2022.
South Korea's Maeil Economic Daily reported that Samsung has notified its partners to cut smartphone production for the remainder of 2022. Originally, Samsung planned to produce about 310 million smartphones in 2022, but that has been cut to about 280 million. It is worth noting that just a day ago, Bloomberg reported that Apple will not increase production this year, planning to produce 220 million iPhones this year, compared with the market forecast of 240 million units.
Samsung said the continued rise in inflation was a key reason for the cut, especially as it affects consumer spending on new products. In addition, persistent shortages of chips and other components continue to affect every phone maker from Samsung to Apple, limiting production accordingly.
Just last month, Strategy Analytics reported that Samsung had a 24% share of the global smartphone market, the company's highest first-quarter performance in five years. At the same time, however, smartphone shipments fell 11% year over year. In the report, a director at Strategy Analytics explained: "Much of the success is due to the launch of the Galaxy S22."
Maeil Economic Daily quoted some analysts who expected Samsung's sales to be "sluggish" in the market competition, especially in low-end and mid-range smartphones. Less than 10 percent of Samsung's new market forecasts consist of foldable phones, and the Galaxy Z Flip 4 and Galaxy Z Fold 4 will be the most high-profile products the company plans to launch this year.
In order to cope with the shortage of semiconductors in many industrial fields, Infineon plans to accelerate the expansion of production capacity in the future.
Infineon's new Chief Production Officer (Chief Production Officer) Rutger Wijburg said in an interview with the media recently that Infineon will commission a new fab every two to three years in the future, while the previous frequency was four to five. year. He said that the current market situation requires accelerated investment, and Infineon may also promote multiple large-scale construction projects in parallel in the future.
One reason for this decision is that the major foundries are currently maintaining high capacity utilization and only accepting orders with longer lead times. Another reason, Rutger Wijburg points to, is the lead time of semiconductor equipment. "Equipment lead times of 12 months are normal now, and even lead times of 18 months or more are becoming more common."
In addition, he also said that the semiconductor market environment is good, and many market research institutions such as McKinsey expect that the annual sales of the semiconductor industry will increase by 8% in the next ten years, of which the automotive semiconductor market will also grow significantly.
