Japan's earthquake caused a shortage of chips affecting the domestic monitoring industry

In recent years, the country has provided a good environment for the development of the video surveillance industry. First of all, the state has issued a number of policy documents to support the development of the video surveillance industry, and has listed it as a priority industry that encourages development. Secondly, the launching of the “Safe City” construction in 2009 and the convening of large-scale events such as the 2010 Shanghai World Expo and the Guangzhou Asian Games have drastically spurred the construction of China’s video surveillance system and accelerated the popularity of video surveillance systems throughout the country. Speed, promote the expansion of industrial scale. The video surveillance industry is huge and the market size continues to grow.

The core technology of video surveillance, whether it is optical imaging technology, audio and video decoding technology, algorithm technology, hardware chip technology, intelligent technology, there is an increasingly obvious trend of industrial globalization, Chinese companies are facing fierce market competition. In addition, the global video surveillance industry has gradually shifted its production and manufacturing links to China. Now the production and manufacturing of video surveillance equipment are basically completed in China. China has already undertaken this part of the business in developed countries to become the world's manufacturing center.

The chip industry is located upstream of the entire video surveillance industry chain. The advancement of chip technology represented by DSPs, CCD chips, etc. has a significant impact on the development of the video surveillance industry. Upstream chip manufacturers have played a decisive role in the technological development of the entire video surveillance industry. At present, the R&D of domestic hardware chips is basically monopolized by foreign manufacturers such as SONY, SHARP, MICRON, Philips, TI, and ADI. There is a great substitute between the technologies and products of these foreign manufacturers, and the competition between them is also relatively fierce. Among them, as a major exporter, Japan's security industry, like its home appliance industry, occupies a pivotal position in the security market worldwide, especially its surveillance camera products, which also account for half of China's surveillance camera market. Japan's production of chips accounts for one-fifth of the global market, micro-chip output value of 63.3 billion US dollars, due to the large production of video surveillance equipment produced in China, including many upstream key raw materials and components, including chips, mainly imported from Japan.

On March 11, 2011, a strong earthquake of magnitude 9 occurred off the coast of Japan. The earthquake not only directly affected the pace of Japan’s economic recovery, but also had a strong impact on Japan’s electronic information industry. Japan is a large country in the global electronic information industry, and the rise and fall of its industry has a huge impact on the world. China is a neighboring country to Japan and the electronic information industries of the two countries are highly complementary. Japan's earthquake will also have different degrees of influence on different areas of China's electronic information industry. In terms of the upstream components industry, Japan is currently the second largest semiconductor producer in the world after the United States. In 2010, the total sales of Japanese semiconductor companies was approximately US$63.5 billion, accounting for approximately 21% of the total sales of US$298.32 billion in the global semiconductor market. In 2010, among the top 20 semiconductor manufacturers in the world, there are five Japanese companies.

Japanese semiconductor chip production lines are widely distributed in the country. Among the areas directly affected by the earthquake (Miyazaki, Iwate, Fukushima, and Akita Prefectures), there are 18 chip manufacturing plants, including a 12-inch plant, 7-seat factory, 7-seater plant, 7-seater plant, and 6-inch plant. And the following chip factory 3 seats. The total capacity of these chip factories accounts for about 20% of Japan's total semiconductor production capacity and about 4% of the total global production capacity. Elpida and Toshiba’s memory production bases are located near Hiroshima and Nagoya, respectively, and are located in the southern and central parts of Japan. They are far from the earthquake zone and are relatively less affected by the earthquake. The semiconductor companies in the earthquake area were mainly Toshiba, OKI, TI, Fujitsu, etc. Their main products are consumer logic ICs and analog ICs. At present, the factories of these enterprises in the earthquake zone have basically stopped work, which will affect the supply of related semiconductor products on a global scale. In particular, Japanese electronics companies such as Toshiba, Sony and Panasonic in China will be directly affected by the shortage of chips. It is worth noting that Japan is currently the world's major producer of semiconductor silicon materials. Shin-Etsu and SUMCO are the world's No. 1 and No. 2 suppliers of semiconductor wafers, and the two companies together account for more than 60% of the global market share.

Among them, the Shin-Etsu company's Baihe plant in Fukushima Prefecture has stopped production due to this earthquake. The plant accounts for 2/3 of the total output of Shin-Etsu and accounts for about 22% of the global semiconductor wafer production. As the silicon wafer is a key material for the production of semiconductor chips, the suspension of this plant will have a huge impact on the global semiconductor chip production.

Due to the Japanese earthquake leading to severe damage to Japan's upstream chip makers, or difficulty in recovering road and other transportation conditions in the short term, there has been a tight supply of chips, which has caused the entire video surveillance industry to reduce product shipments due to the reduction in the number of core components. The sharp drop will bring about a chain reaction that will inevitably lead to a rise in product prices. According to the survey, the current price of chip products has risen sharply, with an increase of around 10%. On the other hand, suppliers' use of seismic factors to speculate on the price of the chip market is also an important reason for pushing up chip prices.