Apple has informed suppliers that the demand for iPhone 13 has weakened; Bosch announced the launch of mass production of silicon carbide chips in December

Toyota plans to promote new electric vehicles in China using BYD batteries and engineering technology

According to foreign media reports, Toyota Motor Company will launch an all electric small car in China by the end of next year. The company has sought key technologies from its local partner BYD and finally produced a small car with reasonable price.

Sources said that BYD's key battery technology - lithium iron phosphate (LFP) blade battery and engineering technology help to reduce costs. It is reported that this car will appear as a concept car at the Beijing auto show in April next year, and is likely to be launched as the second model of Toyota BZ series all electric vehicles.

Lily's comments: Recently, Ouyang Minggao, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and vice president of China electric vehicle hundred people's Association, told the media that the domestic sales of new energy vehicles are expected to reach about 3.3 million this year and 5 million next year. At the new energy automobile track, Tesla, Weilai, Xiaopeng, SAIC and many other automobile enterprises have begun to eat the main market segments. As a big car enterprise of traditional fuel vehicles, Toyota obviously lags behind Chinese car enterprises in the rapid entry of products, but now it has also begun to accelerate. Toyota's plan to launch new energy vehicles in China is a sign of this trend.

Toyota hopes to enter the market of 200000 yuan in the field of electric vehicles, which is cheaper than Tesla modely and Weilai E6, and hopes to expand the automobile audience. Now, China Wuling Hongguang has become China's best-selling electric vehicle for $4500. However, to achieve a low price, the choice of suppliers is very important.

BYD said that the "blade battery" has more than 300 patents, the battery life can reach 600 kilometers, and the cost can be reduced by 30%. Toyota engineers found that BYD LFP blade battery is cheap and can release space. When the blade battery is placed flat on the ground, it is 5 cm to 10 cm thinner than other lithium batteries. The cooperation between Toyota and BYD can be regarded as an attempt of the supply chain. What is the follow-up progress and what is the impact on the overall market? We'll see.

Apple has informed suppliers that demand for the iPhone 13 has weakened

According to foreign media reports, people familiar with the matter said that Apple has informed parts suppliers that the demand for iPhone 13 series products has weakened.

Due to the lack of parts, Apple has reduced the production of iPhone 13 series by 10 million this year, but hopes to make up most of the gap when the supply improves next year. Apple is now notifying suppliers that these orders may not be fulfilled, people familiar with the matter said.

Analysts expect Apple's sales to grow 6% to $117.9 billion in the last three months of this year. But this quarter will not be as hot as apple and Wall Street initially thought. Chip shortages and delivery delays have frustrated many consumers. As inflation and the epidemic bring new concerns to consumers, they will give up buying some products.

Monika comments: just before Christmas in the west, some analysts predicted that consumer electronics products of other brands such as apple mobile phone will usher in the peak sales season at Christmas. The research agency expects that iPhone sales will reach about 40 million during the period from Black Friday to Christmas. This is an innovative record in the case of chip shortage.

But the impact of the shortage of components on Apple exceeded expectations. From Bloomberg's report, it is predicted that order delivery during the Christmas season may be postponed. In particular, for iPad orders, because Apple adopted the "iPhone first" strategy, it allocated part of the production capacity of iPad and old iPhone components to iphone13 series, so as to ensure the supply of new products.

It is understood that the shortage of chips had a great impact on apple in the second and third quarters of this year, losing revenue of $4 billion and $6 billion respectively. On the basis of the shortage of chips, coupled with the impact of the decline in consumer demand for the iPhone 13 series, Apple's revenue may fluctuate greatly in the fourth quarter of this year.

Google will launch the smart watch pixel watch in 2022 to restart the wearable device business

On December 3, according to several media reports, Google is developing a new smart watch, which is planned to be launched next year to once again force the wearable device market.

Anson comments: Gu Ge's plan to make smart watches has been intermittent for many years due to various problems. According to previous reports, Google planned to launch the first smart watch in 2016, but later, due to the problem of synchronization with pixel phones, and Google believed that this watch did not conform to the product style of pixel series, the plan ended hastily.

Although the previous pixel series watches have been shelved, Google has not given up the wearable business and has been polishing its wearable system wear OS. In January this year, Google acquired Fitbit, a US health LOHAS product company, for us $2.1 billion to integrate the Fitbit team into Google's wearable department and accelerate the development of wear OS system. It is not difficult to predict that after restarting the smart wearable product line in the future, Google may imitate the framework of Apple's health business and catch up with Apple's healthy ecology.

Global smartphone shipments reached 1.35 billion in 2021, with growth slowing to 5.3%

Recently, research institute IDC released the latest global smartphone tracking report. It shows that this year, affected by the epidemic factors, the global smartphone shipment will still increase by 5.3% to 1.35 billion in 2021.

However, due to the shortage of chips and logistics problems, the mobile phone shipment data in the third quarter is lower than expected, which may improve in the middle of 2022. To this end, IDC lowered its growth forecast for 2022 from 7.4% to 5.3%, and lowered its growth forecast for 2022 from 3.4% to 3.0%. However, for 2023, IDC believes that the pent up demand will be released to a certain extent, so it is expected that the compound growth rate in 2023 and beyond will be maintained at about 3.5%.

Simon comments: from last year to this year, the world was still seriously affected by the epidemic, resulting in the failure of the supply chain to operate normally, which had a certain impact on the mobile phone market. However, due to the high profits of components in the mobile phone market, it is a priority industry supported by wafer factories. Therefore, even many automobile chip production capacity has been misappropriated to produce mobile phone chips, resulting in many automobile factories being forced to shut down and reduce production.

Therefore, specifically, the impact of the epidemic is real, but it is not as big as expected in the smartphone market. In fact, the smartphone market is also slowly becoming saturated, not only in the Chinese market, but also in the world. The only possible growth point in the future may be in Africa.

At the same time, when the market gradually tends to be saturated, how to maintain the competitiveness of products and obtain more profits has become the focus of manufacturers. 5g is an important opportunity. It is predicted that 5g mobile phone shipments will account for nearly 60% by the end of 2022. In terms of price, the average selling price of smart phones supporting 5g network is expected to be US $643 (about RMB 4096) in 2021, compared with us $204 of the average selling price of 4G devices. Under the condition that the market is gradually saturated and the growth rate is slowing down, it is believed that higher profits will drive manufacturers to popularize 5g phones faster, and 5g penetration is expected to exceed expectations.

Bosch announced the launch of mass production of silicon carbide chips in December

Recently, Bosch Group announced that it would start mass production of silicon carbide chips in December 2021. According to official information, by 2021, Bosch has built an additional 1000 square meters of dust-free workshop in roetlingen wafer factory, and it is expected to build a new 3000 square meters of dust-free workshop for silicon carbide semiconductor production by the end of 2023.

Hobby comments: as the world's largest auto parts supplier, Bosch announced in 2019 that it would invest US $1.1 billion to expand production capacity, including silicon carbide chips, and US $1.1 billion is the largest investment since Bosch was established for more than 130 years. At that time, this meant that silicon carbide, half of the conductor material, would become an indispensable part of the automotive industry.

In fact, from now on, the wave of electric vehicles is irreversible. Due to the advantages of small volume, high conversion rate and low heat loss in power devices, silicon carbide can greatly improve the energy conversion efficiency of electric vehicles and provide longer endurance and higher charging efficiency. With the development of electric vehicles, the combination of 800V platform + 480kw charging will become the standard of high-end models in the future. Under the demand of endurance, charging and power, the penetration of silicon carbide in electric vehicles will continue to accelerate.

At present, the supply of automotive silicon carbide power semiconductors is mainly supplied by Infineon, St, etc. as the world's largest auto parts manufacturer, Bosch has started manufacturing silicon carbide MOSFET in its wafer factory in roetlingen, and has both R & D and production teams in the factory, This is also one of the reasons why Bosch can complete the mass production of silicon carbide products in a short time. Relying on Bosch's influence in the automotive supply chain, its silicon carbide products will soon be applied to end products. However, in order to ensure the continuous growth of demand for electric vehicles in the future, it is necessary to continue to increase expenditure on capacity expansion.

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