Q4 saw  a 24.5% QoQ increase in NAND revenue reaching $11.49 billion, reports TrendForce.

Q1 is forecast to see a further 20% increase in revenues and a 25% increase in contract prices.

Samsung’s bit shipment volume increased by 35% QoQ, coupled with a 12% increase in ASP, boosting its revenue to $4.2 billion—a  44.8% QoQ growth.

Hynix had a 33.1% revenue jump to $2.48 billion.

Western Digital had 2% dip in shipment volume but a 10% increase in ASP, leading to a 7% revenue increase to $1.67 billion.

Kioxia had an 8% revenue increase to $1.44 billion in Q4.

Micron reduced its supply significantly to improve profitability, leading to a more than 10% QoQ decrease in bit shipments and a 1.1% decrease in revenue to $1.14 billion.

Government consent for the acquisition of Newport Wafer Fab by Vishay has finally been given by Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State in the Cabinet Office Oliver Dowden.

The site has now been renamed Newport Vishay.

Vishay’s $177 million offer for the fab was accepted last November but the government has been dragging its feet for four months over giving a final consent order.

The old Inmos fab, which opened in 1980, had been acquired by Nexperia, which is controlled by a China government-controlled fund called Wingtech. This was seen as a security risk.

Vishay says it will expand operations at the site, including R&D for compound semiconductor development.

Sourcengine has published its Q1 lead time report.

Volatile memory is at 11-17 weeks and going up and NV memory is at 13-19 weeks and is mostly going up or, if not, is stable.

Storage is at 10-15 weeks and mostly going up.

Discretes are at 20-47 weeks and stable

Standard logic and linear are at 7-20 weeks and mostly stable

Advanced analogue is at 23-41 weeks and mostly stable

Embedded processors are 15-48 weeks and mostly stable

Programmable logic is at 20-25 weeks and stable

Here is the full report

Over the past seven years, the smartphone market has contracted six times on an annual basis, however, 2024 is set to be the year when the market returns to growth, says IDC.

2024 smartphone shipments are expected to reach 1.2 billion units – up  2.8% y-o-y followed by low single-digit growth till 2028.

While overall volumes are still below pre-pandemic levels, IDC believes the market has corrected itself and is moving on from the bottom.

Foldable smartphone shipments are expected to grow 37%  and shipments will reach 25 million in 2024.

AI  has become part of the smartphone discussion, sparking interest in AI experiences on a handheld device.

The High End Router market declined 8% y-o-y in H2 2023, following an abrupt surge in equipment deliveries in the first half of the year, says Dell’Oro Group.

“The disruptions caused by component shortages and supply chain bottlenecks that started over two years ago are still occurring,” says Dell’Oro vp P Jimmy Yu,  “once supply freed up, router manufacturers were able to fulfill backlogged orders at a faster pace, driving High End Router revenue up 12 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2023. However, this turned into extra inventory at customer sites, causing them to rationalize future new orders. We believe it may be another two quarters before inventory levels return to normal levels at these service providers,” added Yu.

The High End Router market reached nearly $13 billion in 2023. The top three vendors by revenue share were Cisco, Huawei, and Nokia. The only vendors to gain more than one percentage point of market share were Cisco and Huawei.

Core Router revenue grew 14 percent in 2023. The top three vendors by revenue share were Cisco, Huawei, and Juniper. Cisco gained nearly 6 percentage points of market share and was the only vendor to gain market share in the year.

Edge Router and Aggregation Switch revenue was unchanged from the year ago period.