Analysis of the latest global IGBT supply side capacity and demand progress

According to the latest news on February 22, according to the statistics and analysis of DIGITIMES Research, due to the strong demand of electric vehicles and photovoltaic power generation market in 2022, the overall supply and demand gap of IGBT will reach 13.6% under the condition of limited capacity at the supply side.

Looking forward to 2023, the global IGBT industry will continue to expand its capacity, and the economic haze may cause the growth of the electric vehicle market to slow down. Among the other IGBT-related applications, only the new installed capacity of new energy power generation is clear, so the global IGBT supply and demand gap will narrow in 2023, and the current shortage will gradually come to an end.

Institutional analysis shows that the market price of IGBT chips is formed by the joint action of the industry's supply end, manufacturing end and consumer end, and is conducted step by step. The cost price at the supply end includes the price of raw materials and auxiliary materials, labor price, equipment and plant price, fuel and power price, etc. The price of raw materials is greatly affected by mineral resources, international situation and emergencies, and is also an important factor affecting the IGBT market price; The supply side price is transmitted to the manufacturing side to form the production cost. The manufacturing industry combines the supply and demand premium, R&D cost and enterprise profit to form the "manufacturing side price" to transmit to the consumer side, and the consumer market demand elasticity also acts on the supply side and the manufacturing side, forming the "price demand price" transmission path to affect the IGBT chip market pricing.

Domestically, the data shows that at present, China's IGBT chip industry has a low self-sufficiency rate, most of which rely on imports, and the main domestic market share is monopolized by Infineon, Fuji, Mitsubishi and other enterprises. Since IGBT single tube and module enterprises are also major IGBT chip manufacturers, the market concentration of IGBT single tube and module can roughly reflect the concentration of domestic IGBT chip market. In 2020, the global IGBT single tube market CR3, CR5 and CR10 are 54.2%, 657.4% and 85.7% respectively; The global IGBT module market CR3, CR5 and CR10 are 57.6%, 66.7% and 79.1% respectively. In general, the market concentration of IGBT single tube and module is high, and the market share is monopolized by leading enterprises, which can roughly reflect that China's IGBT chip market concentration is also high, and foreign leading enterprises and domestic representative enterprises occupy the main market share.

On the other hand, China's IGBT chip manufacturers have different production modes, and their downstream customers and product application fields are also different. For example, the main downstream markets of Swaziland Microelectronics are white electricity, industrial control, new energy vehicles and photovoltaic fields; China Resources Micro Downstream is mainly used in industrial control and new energy vehicles; Times Electric mainly distributes rail transit, power grid, new energy vehicles and new energy power generation; Star Semi-Guide mainly develops industries, new energy vehicles and photovoltaic downstream fields; The downstream market of new clean energy is in the field of photovoltaic and white electricity; Macro and Micro Technology mainly focuses on industrial control, photovoltaic and new energy vehicles.

The data shows that among the major representative enterprises, Time Electric has the largest overall operating revenue in 2021, with 15.1 billion yuan, but the IGBT business revenue accounts for a relatively small proportion, about 6%; Stargate's semi-pilot IGBT business is highly focused. Although the overall revenue scale is average (about 1.7 billion yuan), the IGBT revenue reaches 1.6 billion yuan, accounting for more than 94%. From the perspective of the competitiveness of the enterprise's IGBT chip business, the comprehensive competitiveness of STAR SEMICONDUCTOR is strong.

From the perspective of the five-force competition model, China's IGBT chip industry has a low degree of localization, limited supply capacity, high degree of customization, and strong bargaining power on supply; IGBT chips have a large market demand space, low product homogeneity, greater external dependence, and weak bargaining power of consumers; The IGBT chip industry is attractive to potential entrants, but faces high barriers such as capital, technology and talent. In general, the threat of potential entrants in the industry is general; IGBT chip is the development direction encouraged by China at present. It has a deep application in many fields, and its application space in new energy vehicles, new energy power generation and other fields will gradually expand. Therefore, the threat of industrial alternatives is low; In addition, China's IGBT chip industry is in the growth stage. Under the background of domestic substitution, the existing competitors in the industry compete more fiercely.

According to the Prospective Industry Research Institute, the gap between China's IGBT products and international giants Infineon and Mitsubishi Electric is more than 10 years. After entering the fifth generation, the gap is expected to shorten to 10 years, and the gap between the sixth and seventh generation products will be within 5 years. From the perspective of the technology structure of the representative enterprises in China's IGBT chip industry, the seventh generation of IGBT technology is applied to the Star semiconductors, with a voltage coverage of 100-3300V; The sixth generation IGBT technology with voltage coverage of 360-1350V is laid out by China Microelectronics; The fifth generation of IGBT technology is applied by Silan Microelectronics, Time Electric and Microelectronics; New Jieneng mainly applies the fourth generation IGBT technology.