Industry trends
Monthly Chip Industry Dynamics: Supply Disruption, Price Hikes, and AI Chip Layout in Focus
Recently, the global electronic chip industry has witnessed multiple key developments. Fluctuations in the supply chain, rising product prices, and adjustments in the layout of the AI chip sector are profoundly affecting the development pace of downstream industries such as automotive and technology, becoming the core focus of the industry.
The wafer supply suspension incident of Nexperia (the Netherlands) has continued to escalate, triggering a chain reaction in the global supply chain. It is reported that Nexperia suspended the supply of wafers to its packaging and testing factory in Dongguan, China at the end of October. Stefan Tilger, the interim CEO, clearly stated in a letter that the reason for the supply suspension was "the local management's failure to comply with the contractual payment terms". As a core supplier of global basic power control chips, 70% of Nexperia's European-produced wafers rely on Chinese factories for packaging and testing, and its products are widely used in key fields such as automotive electronics. This supply suspension directly forced international automakers such as Stellantis to respond urgently, and the price of some related chips soared from a few cents to 2-3 yuan RMB, an astonishing increase. However, Nexperia's Chinese subsidiary issued a statement on November 2, saying that the current "inventory of finished products and work-in-progress is sufficient" to support order delivery until the end of the year, and has launched an emergency plan to accelerate the qualification certification of new wafer supply sources in an attempt to alleviate market concerns.
At the same time, the memory chip industry is caught in a situation of "severe shortage", with a clear upward trend in prices and a potentially longer duration than expected. A research report released by UBS Group on November 3 pointed out that the negotiation on the contract price of DDR memory in the fourth quarter of 2025 is progressing positively, and the quarter-on-quarter increase is expected to reach 21% or higher. The core reason lies in the surging demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) driven by artificial intelligence (AI). Industry giants such as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have successively tilted their limited wafer production capacity towards HBM, which has higher profits, resulting in squeezed supply of traditional DDR memory. Currently, the price of DRAM products has generally increased by 15%-30%, and the price of NAND flash memory has also increased by 5%-10%. Gou Jiazhang, General Manager of Silicon Motion, bluntly stated that the global memory industry is facing a structural and long-term severe shortage, which cannot be resolved in 2026, and the market turning point may not come until the second half of 2027.
In the field of AI chips, NVIDIA's overseas layout moves have attracted attention. On October 31, NVIDIA announced that it would supply more than 260,000 advanced AI chips to the South Korean government and major enterprises including Samsung Electronics, SK Group, and Hyundai Motor Group. After this supply, the number of NVIDIA AI chips in the South Korean market will increase from the current 65,000 to more than 300,000. Among them, the South Korean government plans to use more than 50,000 chips to invest in AI infrastructure, while enterprises such as Samsung, SK, and Hyundai will use the chips in the construction of smart factories in fields such as semiconductors and automobile manufacturing. This cooperation is an important achievement reached after NVIDIA's CEO Jensen Huang met with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and leaders of relevant enterprises during the APEC Summit, which will further consolidate NVIDIA's position in the global AI chip market.
Under the superposition of multiple developments, profound changes are taking place in the supply chain stability, capacity allocation, and technological competition pattern of the global chip industry. Downstream automotive and technology enterprises need to continuously pay attention to industry trends and adjust their response strategies.