According to the latest report, display driver IC (DDI) suppliers in Taiwan, China, mostly reported strong sales in the first quarter, but they are bracing for a challenging second quarter amid uncertain demand.
In the first quarter, among the world’s major DDI suppliers, Novatek’s revenue increased by 38.5% year on year, Ruiding increased by 37.8% year on year, and Tianyu increased by 48.9% year-on-year, Sitron increased by 38.4% year-on-year.
Join tip3x on Telegram
Duntai fell by 10.5% year-on-year, mainly because its shipments mainly flowed to the mobile phone segment, and mobile phone demand momentum has been weak, which may be affected by the reduction of orders from mobile phone customers.
Moreover, DDI demand for TV and Chromebook applications has been on a downward trend since Q4 2021, but DDI suppliers are seeing steady shipments of their business laptops, tablets, and wearables.
Top supplier Novatek and some other peers are also aggressively pushing ahead with the production of OLED displays for high-end mobile phones, even though the smartphone market remains fairly sluggish.
Automotive DDI chips are becoming a key chip area for Novatek, Qijing, Radium, and Sitronix, all of which are committed to mass production of DDI and TDDI chips for automotive in 2022, by allocating more foundry capacity to this area.
The sources pointed out that growing market uncertainty, such as worsening inflation, further weakened end-consumer demand, prompting customers to lower their shipment expectations for the second quarter.
The source also said that due to sluggish market sentiment, display panel prices continued to fall, and the pressure to cut prices for mobile DDI and large-size TV DDI was increasing in the second quarter.
