The Zhitong Finance App learned that according to TrendForce's latest survey, recent economic data shows that inflation in the US market continues to cool down, and the US Federal Reserve announced a two-yard interest rate cut in September to prevent economic growth from slowing down. Furthermore, in an uncertain international situation, it may cause consumers to reduce their willingness to spend, and conservative and downgraded consumer attitudes may become a major risk impacting the demand for year-end festival shopping. TrendForce Jibang Consulting estimates that total MLCC supplier shipments in the fourth quarter of 2024 will be about 1205 billion units, a decrease of 3.6% per quarter.

Orders for mobile phones and laptops are conservative during peak season. However, demand for AI servers is steady, and suppliers from Japan and South Korea mainly benefit

TrendForce Jibang Consulting said that the fourth quarter laptop forecast order volume (Forecast) released by ODM fell by an average of 5% to 8%. Due to the brand's conservative order planning for mobile phones, laptops, Netcom, tablets, etc., demand for the preparation of only some commercial laptops and Huawei's new 30% off mobile phones rose slightly. As a result, ODM became cautious in preparing materials in mid-September. Even in the face of China's 11th holiday and European and American festival needs, their preparation attitude was relatively cautious. Furthermore, although Apple has launched the AI-enabled iPhone 16, Apple Intelligence still needs time to mature related applications, and whether it can trigger a wave of switching is still variable.

On the other hand, demand for AI servers continues to heat up. Although mass production of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs was delayed until mid-fourth quarter due to mask design revisions, market demand for Hopper architectures continued to grow. In the fourth quarter, orders for H100/H200 GPUs increased 65%, and orders for downgraded H20 GPUs also increased 33%. This situation simultaneously drove demand from US CSP customers for 400G Switch switches and Amazon (AWS) AI acceleration cards (using Annapurna network chips) to continue to grow. As a result, some Netcom manufacturers forecast an average increase of nearly 15% in the fourth quarter. TrendForce Jibang Consulting pointed out that demand for high-end MLCC stocking did not change much in the fourth quarter, and Japanese and South Korean suppliers will have more time to plan production capacity allocation to meet the demand for GB200 orders next year.

The US dollar weakened and the Asian currency strengthened, and MLCC suppliers faced increased operating and pricing pressure

The US Federal Reserve officially launched a cycle of interest rate cuts. As a result, the US dollar weakened, driving Asian currencies to rise. In mid-September, the Japanese yen broke through 140 yen to 1 US dollar in one fell swoop. TrendForce Jibang Consulting said that MLCC suppliers faced a slowdown in order demand in the fourth quarter, and a sharp increase in the risk of exchange losses will also increase the pressure on their operations. Therefore, suppliers plan to control capacity utilization and reduce inventory levels to stabilize product pricing, thereby maintaining revenue and profits. According to the TrendForce Jibang Consulting survey, the average production capacity utilization rate of Japanese and South Korean manufacturers currently remains above 80%, while the rest of the manufacturers still hover between 60% and 70%. Due to the poor start of the peak season in the second half of this year and the slowdown in order demand in the fourth quarter, suppliers have become more cautious in terms of operation and pricing.