Tech News: Smartphone and PC Stabilize. Semicon Capex Cuts. Cloud Capex Up. TSMC Increasing Prices.
Smartphone 2024 small growth about +5% YoY. PC 2024 small unit growth +4%. Don’t expect much better in 2025 but the Silicon content will increase, both for processor and DRAM.
Lots of cuts in 2025 Semiconductor Capex. TSMC is up but Samsung, UMC, Intel down. Japan Semi Equipment association has revised down 2025 growth from 10% to 5%.
Cloud Capex booming. Microsoft announced US$80bn in FY25. Meta at US$60-65bn. TSMC to increase 5-3nm wafer price by 5-10%. The Ai segment of semiconductors is doing extremely well.
Smartphones:
Canalys says that global smartphone units increased by 3% in 4Q24 to reach 330 million. Full year 2024 reach 1.22 billion smartphones, or +7% YoY increase.
Counterpoint says global smartphone sell-through increased + 4% YoY in 2024. The top two brands, Samsung and Apple, were largely flat YoY in 2024. Xiaomi grew fastest among the top five and ranked #3. OPPO lost volume but held on to #4 ahead of fast-growing vivo that did well in selected markets.
We will have more data next week (Gartner and IDC numbers, I prefer IDC for consistency). 2024 was a better year but the bigger picture is that there is no growth in smartphone units. End-demand is stuck in a range of 1.2-1.3bn.
More interesting, AI local apps in smartphones are real and processors are getting bigger (more expensive), DRAM content is increasing. For ex: DRAM content / smartphone was 9GB on average in 2023, 11GB in 2024, new high-end models are at 16GB. Samsung Galaxy S24 normal model was at 8GB, S25 at 12GB.
