When the silicon carbide (SiC) industry is on the rise, the market has huge business opportunities and high growth potential, and even the downstream assembly plant Hon Hai (2317-TW) also joined the battle, but due to the high technical threshold, the industry has formed a state of developing its own strengths and looking for partners to form an alliance to form a supply chain. Under the influence of the long certification period of silicon carbide products, the industry said frankly, “As long as it can be done, We are open to any cooperation.”
The silicon carbide industry is currently dominated by IDM factories, of which Wolfspeed in the United States is in a leading position. In the fields of substrates, epitaxy and other materials and wafer manufacturing, the market share exceeds 60%. Japan has Roma Semiconductor, and Europe has STMicroelectronics And Infineon; and from upstream material growth to processing and other equipment, IDM factories are self-developed, spanning equipment manufacturing, substrate and epitaxy, design and wafer manufacturing and other industrial chain links.
Due to the high technical threshold of the silicon carbide industry, from certification, yield, mass production, to commercial scale, and even to the stage of profitability, there are challenges at every level. The industry bluntly said that the current state of the industry can be said to be “everyone has a grasp, and everyone has a chance”.
From the most upstream crystal growth, slicing, substrates to epitaxy, and even production equipment, Taiwanese factories have deepened their development by dividing their own areas of expertise, while also looking for partners for vertical integration of upstream and downstream industries to jointly move towards the certification stage; After the certification, further mutual investment and mergers and acquisitions will be made to deepen mutual cooperation.
Industry players said that there are many cooperation opportunities in the market. While focusing on the development of their expertise, they also continue to cooperate with other manufacturers. Due to the strong demand, the product certification period is long and the application challenges are high. As long as the certified products can be produced, Any cooperation case is open.
The industry believes that although a hundred schools of thought contend in the early stage of the development of the silicon carbide industry, the market has huge business opportunities, and it is not a problem who comes in, but whether it can be done well is the problem. The partners of “Hezheng Lianheng” are also more powerful. As the market scale becomes larger and larger, the future industry is bound to move towards mergers and acquisitions, and the big one will be Evergrande.
