Texas Instruments' pricing strategy continues influencing other analog IC suppliers, driving prices downward and increasing price flexibility. Granting cost-downs on higher-volume commitments, peer suppliers Microchip, Infineon, NXP, and STMicroelectronics have become malleable. Still, inflated customer inventories are likely limiting customers' abilities to take full advantage of the situation. According to the Commodity IQ Price Index, analog power and analog signal device pricing was down sequentially in Q3 2023 by 13% and 9%, respectively. Meanwhile, channel and supplier inventories for analog ICs remain well over twice the Commodity IQ Inventory Index pre-pandemic baseline.

Assuming the global economy does not enter a significant recession, semiconductor demand will be reinvigorated in the first half of early 2024, but with still-limited inventory digestion, especially amongst component distributors and EMS providers, overall Q1 semiconductor demand is expected to be sub-seasonal and uneven across product types and end markets. Increases in some areas, like AI applications, are being counterbalanced by declines or slowing growth in other sectors like automotive and industrial.

As the end of the year approaches, the electronics market is nearing a finish line of its own, with the supply chain mainly resolving the lead time and pricing issues that have plagued buyers throughout most of the year. Moreover, the customary peak-season rise in component demand growth in the second half is becoming weaker than expected in 2023, affording further improvements in purchasing conditions. 

Demand for non-ferrous metals will rise into H1 2024 as EVs (despite recent demand trends) and renewable energy applications drive growth. Copper spot pricing is up nearly 7% month-on-month through the third week of November. While pricing and demand for crucial precious metals have been declining since May, spot prices have shown increases since October, following the Hamas attack on Israel. Gold spot pricing climbed by 8% through October, while silver has struggled to achieve significant upward price momentum. For electronic component buyers, it is important to understand the contracted pricing of metal input costs to component manufacturers, with most of 2024 perhaps already negotiated.

The South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy, alongside the Ministry of Science and ICT, reported that its ICT (information and communications technology) exports surpassed imports for the first time in almost a year and a half. With memory ICs being an essential portion of the country's ICT exports, the October upswing represents a reversal in memory demand—the Commodity IQ H1 2024 forecast for high-end memory points to continued price increases and some availability constraints as a result. 

Sodium-ion (Na-ion) batteries have twice the energy density of their lithium-ion (Li-ion) counterparts. Still, with the space limitations in consumer electronics, Li-ion chemistries remain a better option. Additionally, Li-ion batteries have two to five times as many charging cycles and can tolerate the broader range of temperatures that, for example, smartphones demand. So, while Li-ion batteries are about a third more costly than Na-ion batteries – the benefits outweigh the additional cost. This scenario translates into the need for end-market battery buyers to continuously consider raw material costs for Li-ion batteries, particularly cobalt and lithium.

Evidenced by market reports of currently constrained CY9-series 32-bit MCUs and S29-series NOR flash from Infineon now impacting customer production timelines and indications of specific 16-bit Renesas MCU orders being canceled by the company – lead times and pricing are not necessarily in the buyer's favor for all electronic components. Indeed, the Commodity IQ Lead Time Index across all memory technologies increased month-on-month in October by 2.4%. For microcontrollers, pricing was rising in November, according to the Commodity IQ Price Index. 

High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) is the hottest product in the memory market today, with booming demand for the fast-performing DRAM helping to propel the industry’s recovery in Q4. However, HBM is also in a severe shortage, as leading memory suppliers Samsung and Micron continue to ramp up production to catch up with top HBM maker SK Hynix. As the memory makers rush to increase output, they are turning to semiconductor equipment suppliers to provide the advanced chipmaking and packaging capabilities required for HBM manufacturing.