Daily Authority: Price hikes 📈

Today’s bad news, if true, has been a long time coming with DigiTimes ($) reports that the largest player in semiconductor wafer manufacturing, TSCM, is planning a price increase of up to 20% in 2022:

• “TSMC has announced a price increase of around 10% for its sub-16nm process manufacturing to its customers, with the new prices expected to apply from 2022, according to sources from IC design houses.”
• It would be the company’s steepest single increase and it undoubtedly represents increases in material prices and a decrease in margins in the supply chain.
• TSMC this week also confirmed a delay in next-generation 3nm manufacturing.
• TSMC does not announce its prices, although the DigiTimes Report suggests the company is trying to get a 28nm wafer to “nearly $ 3,000” from January 2022.
• For comparison, and based on estimates by retired engineers, there are also rumors that 5nm wafers cost around $ 17,000.
• You can try a silicon cost calculator here, though you need to think of it as accurate at best (Adapteva).

Oh oh:

• Obviously, if it’s correct and applied to all customers, it would be chips like the A and M series from Apple, Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD.
• This of course means that CPUs, GPUs, SoCs and the like cost more, reduce margins for manufacturers and / or are passed on to us, the consumers, on smartphones, iPhones, PCs etc.
• It all depends on shipping rates soaring and hitting an 11-year high, steel prices soaring, bottlenecks – and the problem is that what appears to be a short-term problem continues (Blümberg).
• Phil Levy, chief economist at Flexport, said The New York Times: “I’m less in the ‘transitional’ camp than in the ‘We have cause for concern’.”
• Other rumors of a shortage include the launch dates for new smartphones, which are a few weeks off the scheduled dates.

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Here is someone’s autographed printout: