Lack of core price increases, a new round of security reshuffle begins

Lack of core price increases, a new round of security reshuffle begins

Recently, according to CCTV Finance, the price of security cameras has risen by 40% due to the chip's emergency. A sales manager of a company in Shenzhen said, “The commonly used 2 million pixel camera in September last year was 140 yuan, and now it has risen to 210 yuan. The most commonly used product, the camera has also increased by 30% to 40%.”

From the perspective of various sources of information, as early as Q3 of 2020, such "chips are in emergency" signs have already existed. In February, the media reported the news of price adjustments, such as the price increase of storage chips between 20% and 30%. , The main control chip increases by about 10%-15%, and the price increase for some small chips reaches between 30%-40%.

Taken together, the main reasons for the price increase of this round of security cameras are the following four points:

One is the shortage of raw materials and rising prices. For example, photoresist, which is an important raw material for chip packaging and testing, costs 40,000 to 50,000 yuan for a bottle of 4 kilograms of photoresist, which can produce about 4 million chips, which is only equivalent to the company's 5-hour production capacity. However, according to relevant staff of Huatian Technology, the company used to purchase more than 100 kilograms of photoresist each time. Recently, due to the shortage of raw materials, the company can only buy a small amount each time. Due to short supply, the prices of raw materials have been rising, and it is even difficult to grab some products with price increases. According to customs officials, from January to February this year, the import of integrated circuits at Kunshan Port in Jiangsu alone exceeded 10 billion yuan. While the quantity was the same as that of the same period last year, the value of imports increased by 20%.

The second is insufficient production capacity. At present, the market generally believes that the domestic "lack of core" lies in the chip processing technology, but in fact, the main manufacturing process of security SOC chips is between 45-28nm. Except for high-end chips, the processing requirements of most security chips are still at a relatively low level. . my country has mastered 28mn and 14mn chip processing technology, which is fully qualified for the production needs of common security chips. However, due to the large gap in domestic production capacity, the dependence on imports is still strong. From a statistical point of view, in terms of the number of imported chips over the years, low-priced mature process products still account for a large proportion. At present, the urgent problems that the domestic chip industry needs to solve are not only insufficient capabilities in the high-end field, but also insufficient production capabilities for ordinary products. The shortage of security chips this time is mainly due to the appearance of the latter problem;

The third is a blowout of market demand in various industries. Starting from the third quarter of 2020, due to the outbreak of the epidemic, the demand for chips in home appliances and other fields has surged in a short period of time. At the same time, the production capacity of chip manufacturers has not been able to expand in time, which makes them unable to meet all order requirements. As a result, chip shipments in the fields of security, automobiles, and computers have been compressed. For upstream chip manufacturers, industry value will affect the tilt of their production capacity. From this perspective, security is not their first choice;

Fourth is man-made chaos in the market. Hoarding goods and raising prices on the ground have affected the normal operation of the entire security industry. According to market personnel, even more directly hoarding goods while grabbing factory production capacity, resulting in most security manufacturers can only purchase at high prices. The final result has directly led to a general price increase of camera products. According to market personnel, related products of Haikang and Dahua have risen from 5 yuan to 60 yuan, while other brands of cameras will have relatively higher prices.

Prices of some products will increase in March 2021

For the security industry, the lack of cores will inevitably lead to confusion in overall product planning, and it is expected that this phenomenon may not be alleviated in 2021. There is no doubt that the market will further concentrate on leading companies, and the squeezed small and medium-sized enterprises will again Usher in a new wave of "cold wave".