Based on past and the current market status, the growth of electric car, Bluetooth speaker, home automation, fast charging, wireless charging applications has accelerated, it lead to the shortage of MOSFET product in the past period of time, especially after the Iphone X been released in 2017, wireless charging market increased rapidly and brings huge demand for power IC and MOSFET day by day.

As we know that in the peak season of Q3 in 2017, due to the surge in MOSFET demand, many manufacturers have issued price increase notifications, including Infineon, ON Semiconductor, and CJ, which have increased their prices three times in 2017. After that, Sinopower, A-Power and other Taiwanese MOSFET makers followed up.

On the raw material side, there are three reasons for the price increase. First, the price increase of silicon material causes the wafers price to rise, secondly, the price of packaging materials, resin powder price increased. The third, the fingerprint identification chip demand has soared, and the benefit of fingerprint identification chip is much higher by compared with MOSFET, wafer makers and packaging and testing plant prefer to put more production capacity on the fingerprint identification chip, which directly leads to the shortage of MOSFET supply.

It is understood that the supply of low-voltage MOS is shorter than medium- and high-voltage MOSFET. The global IDM has gradually faded out the low- and medium-voltage MOSFET market for computers and consumer electronics, and its production capacity has been transferred to the mid-high-voltage MOSFET market for automotive electronics, IGBT and Super Junction components. It is the reason why medium and low voltage MOSFET supply is in a worse situation.

From the lead time side, according to Future Electronics' Q4 market analysis report in 2017, the lead time for Infineon, Diodes, Freescale/ON, ST, Vishay and Nexperia has been extended to 16-30 weeks for low-voltage MOSFET products. In terms of the High-voltage MOSFET products, except for the stable delivery of IXYS and MS, the lead time of Infineon, Freescale, ON, ST, Rohm, Vishay have all been extended.

When will this situation get end? Insiders say that it may be until Q18 in 2018, this year's situation will show a gradual relief, anyway it will be much better than 2017, but all depends on whether the wafer makers can release more 8-inch wafers production capability. At the same time, the extension of the lead time and price hike of the global manufacturers in this time has also given Chinese MOSFET Makers an opportunity. In 2017, the sales of Chinese MOSFET makers have gained a certain increase, on the other hand, when orders turn to Chinese manufacturers, it also relieve some pressure for the MOSFET supply in the world wide.

Overall, the supply of MOSFET will gradually improve in 2018, and will resume normal and stable supply around Q4. At the very least, the current MOSFET market is much better than the MLCC market.