The outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, the domestic driver IC supply and demand is more unbalanced

Recently, the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out, and the contradiction between supply and demand of domestic driver ICs has become more serious.

At present, TSMC has announced that it will stop supplying Russia, and companies from Japan, the United States and other countries have also joined the ranks. How to deal with the driver chip gap? The Russian ambassador said it would be imported from China. Under normal circumstances, Russia's import of Chinese driver ICs is a good thing for domestic companies, but there are not many domestic driver ICs for self-supply, only about 10%, and they are heavily dependent on imports. If Russia imports Chinese driver ICs, the products of only a few domestic manufacturers may be in short supply, and price increases are inevitable.

In addition, industry insiders said that Mini LED backlights are expected to "start up" this year, mainly used in TVs, tablets, VR/AR, notebooks, monitors and other fields, so the demand for driver ICs will also increase. At that time, many companies will be worried that they will not be able to get IC, and the hoarding of goods will be staged again. In addition, although the overall number of new coronary pneumonia infections in the world has shown a downward trend, the situation is still not optimistic. According to the latest prediction results of Lanzhou University's "New Coronary Pneumonia Epidemic Global Prediction System", the global epidemic may subside by the end of 2023, and the cumulative number of infected people in the world will reach at least 750 million. Recently, some parts of China have also experienced repeated outbreaks.

To sum up, it is very likely that the price of driver IC will increase this year. Companies need to prepare in advance. For long-term development, the industry must work together to resist this pressure.