In recent years, China's semiconductor industry is developing rapidly, in which the IC sealing and testing industry is the earliest in the whole domestic semiconductor industry. At present, the scale of some manufacturers in China is as large as that of international manufacturers. A lot of useful information can be captured by comparing the changes in the ranking of the top 10 closed test vendors from 2009 to 2019.

The editor sorted out the manufacturers and regions of the top ten closed test factories in the world in 2009 and the third quarter of 2019 (the latest statistics), and found that great changes have taken place in this decade. Some manufacturers have quietly ascended to the top, while others have left the market sadly.

Two "nail households"

The most intriguing comparisons between the two lists are Sunlight and the second Amkor, which have remained stable and unchanged over the past decade. But over the years, both have made a lot of moves.

First of all, the leading boss, Sun and Moon, was founded in 1984. when it was listed in 1989, it was already the second largest semiconductor packaging factory in the world, second only to South Korea's Annan Semiconductor at that time. Sun and Moon focuses on providing complete packaging and testing services for semiconductor customers, including wafer front segment testing and wafer needle testing to the back segment of packaging, materials and finished product testing.

Since 1990, Riyueguang has been trying mergers and acquisitions, acquiring a 99.9% stake in chip tester Foley Electronics for NT $100 million and entering the IC testing industry. The acquisition of Motorola's closed testing business in 1999 and the acquisition of 70 per cent of ISE Labs in Silicon Valley in the same year, when ISE was then the largest professional semiconductor testing manufacturer in the US and the second in the world, enabled Sun and Moon to become the world's largest semiconductor closed test factory in 2003.

In March of the same year, Riyueguang bought 20.67% of Huanlong Electric for 4 billion yuan to take the lead in operation; in 2004, it acquired NEC's closed test plant in Yamagata Prefecture; in 2007, with Taiwan's liberalization of mainland policy, Riyueguang acquired a 60% stake in Weiyu Technology and NXP Suzhou Plant; in 2008, it acquired South Korean companies, Shandong Weihai Aiyi and one Electronics Company, to cut into transistors and simulate IC closed tests. In 2010, it acquired a 98.9% stake in Huandian, becoming the first company to combine substrates, closed testing and system manufacturing; in 2012 and 2013, it acquired Taiwan's Yangding Technology and Wuxi Toshiba closed Test Plant, respectively, and stepped into the closed testing of discrete devices to consolidate its relationship with IDM manufacturers in Japan. In 2017, Sun and Moon Precision merged with Silicon products to form Sun and Moon Holdings, which further strengthened the position of Sun and Moon Global closed Test Brother.

Sun and Moon is a well-deserved "shopaholic", successfully reached the top in many years of buying, and maintained for many years. Its business territory covers China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and the United States.

When it comes to Amkor, Amkor was founded in 1968, and its business scope includes packaging, testing, processing and selling home-made products for integrated circuit products. Its development process is more tortuous, after a series of development track from prosperity to decline, and then from decline to prosperity. In 1997, Asia suffered a financial crisis, the Korean won depreciated sharply, and Amkor (formerly known as Yanan) was insolvent. After that, after restructuring, a number of strategic investments were introduced and listed in the United States, thus becoming an American company of Korean origin.

Amkor established the business model of OSAT (closed Test on behalf of processing) at the beginning of its establishment. For a long time after its founding, Amkor ranked first in the global semiconductor closed test outsourcing business, and was later surpassed by Sunlight and Moonlight.

In 2015, Amkor announced the acquisition of Japanese sealing testing factory J-Device (in 2009, Amkor, NMD and Toshiba formed a joint venture J-Devices in Kyushu, Japan), pre-challenge the throne of Sun and Moon, and formally completed the merger and acquisition in 2016. Amkor mergers and acquisitions of J-Device, in addition to expanding its own market share, part of the reason is to take a fancy to its position in the automotive chip closed testing market, relying on J-Device to expand its business territory, J-Device occupies the first place in the Japanese packaging and testing (OAST) city, and reaches the sixth in the world, but this move only consolidates its second position and does not waver to the sun and moon.

In 2017, Amkor completed the acquisition of NANIUM S.A. Is the largest semiconductor packaging and testing outsourcing service provider in Europe, its wafer-level chip packaging solutions (WLCSP) is a world leader, and high-yield and reliable wafer-level fan-out packaging technology has been used in large-scale production. Industry insiders said that the acquisition will help strengthen its position in the wafer-level fan-out packaging market.

In addition to the first two "nail households", the next few have undergone earth-shaking changes in the past decade.

Eat and be eaten

Silicon products, which was still exploring flowers in 2009, became the fourth place in 2019, while Changdian Technology, which was still hovering in the 19th place at that time, succeeded in taking the top spot.

Silicon products and long-term electricity technology are typical of eating and being eaten. Founded in 1984, Silicon products is mainly engaged in the manufacturing, processing, trading and testing of various integrated circuit packages. On November 24, 2017, the website of the Ministry of Commerce of China issued an announcement. It said that additional restrictions approved 30% equity interest in ASE Technology Holding Co., Ltd. Manufacturing Co., Ltd. Sipin Precision Industry Co., Ltd.

After the announcement of the approval of the Ministry of Commerce, Taiwan's Sipin Precision issued an announcement that night, in which the board of directors decided to sell 30 per cent of its subsidiary, Sippin Technology (Suzhou) Co., Ltd., with a total transaction amount of 1.026 billion yuan, and the counterparty was Ziguang Group. After this transaction, Sike (Suzhou) Co., Ltd. is still a subsidiary of Silicon products. In such a deal, the status of the sun and moonlight closed test leader was guaranteed, but the ranking of Silicon began to decline.

However, Changdian Technology has taken a different path. Changdian Technology was founded in 1998 to provide a full range of one-stop services for chip integration, including integrated circuit system integration package design, technology development, product certification, wafer testing, Wafer Bumping, chip product testing and delivery to semiconductor suppliers around the world.

In 2015, Changdian Technology introduced the big fund "small and broad" to acquire Singapore closed test plant Star Ke Jinpeng, staging a "snake swallowing elephant". Xingke Jinpeng was the fourth largest closed test manufacturer in the world at that time, which was much larger than long Electric Technology (the sixth largest closed test factory in the world in 2014) and more advanced in technology.

It is reported that in the industry, Xingke Jinpeng's high-end packaging technology capabilities can compete with Sunlight, Amkor, Silicon products and so on. Xingke Jinpeng's eWLB and SiP are in a leading position in the world in terms of technology and scale. Through mergers and acquisitions, the revenue scale of Changdian Technology has leapt to the third place in the world, and the product line has also officially moved towards the array of international advanced technology, with high-end packaging technologies such as Flip Chip and Bumping, as well as advanced packaging capacity such as Fan-In, Fan-Out and SiP, and the closed test factory has been expanded from Chinese mainland to Singapore and South Korea, becoming a giant whose technical strength and market scale can compete side by side with Nikko and Anqu.

The victory of domestic manufacturers

In addition to Licheng Technology, Ibiden Bow Fei Electric, Shinko Xinguang Electric, Xinxing Electronics, South Asia Circuit Board and SEMCO are all IC packaging board manufacturers. Over the next 10 years, it has been gradually replaced by manufacturers that specialize in IC closed testing. One of the noteworthy is Licheng Technology, which has been on the list since 2009.

Licheng Technology, founded in 1997, is a large memory closed testing factory, providing customers with comprehensive semiconductor supply chain construction and all-round packaging and testing services. In 2016, Licheng Technology announced the acquisition of the packaging plant of Suzhou Feisuo Spansion in order to strengthen its presence in the mainland market.

According to its plan, in the memory closed testing business, the main body of the business will be the parent company Licheng and Shenzhen factory Peitun (Payton). As for the non-memory closed testing business, Licheng has divided the original logic IC, system-level packaging (SiP), multi-chip packaging (MCP) and other businesses into branches. In order to increase its competitiveness, Licheng intends to turn the newly purchased Feisuo Suzhou plant into a manufacturing hub of non-memory closed testing business.

In 2017, Licheng signed a series of contracts with Micron Technology and Micron Memory Japan to acquire a 39.6 per cent stake in Tera Probe, a Japanese listed company, and a 100 per cent stake in Micron's closed test plant Micron Akita in Akita, Japan, through public acquisitions, respectively. Under many layouts, Licheng successfully entered the fifth place in 2019.

Two mainland manufacturers are also worth saying, among which Huatian Science and Technology was founded in 2003, mainly engaged in semiconductor integrated circuits, MEMS sensors, semiconductor components packaging and testing business, packaging and testing products have 12 series of more than 200 varieties, integrated circuit annual packaging capacity of 10 billion pieces, integrated circuit annual packaging capacity and sales revenue are ranked second in China's listed companies in the same industry.

In November 2007, Huatian Science and Technology A shares were listed successfully, and it also became the first listed company in Tianshui City, Gansu Province. With the help of the acquired FCI/ Mike Optoelectronics and Epoch Microtech, Huatian Technology set up a new Silicon Valley office in 2016 and successfully established a foothold in the European and American markets.

Tongfu Micro Power is a Sino-foreign joint stock enterprise jointly invested by Nantong Huada Microelectronics Co., Ltd. and Fujitsu (China) Co., Ltd. and controlled by the Chinese side, specializing in integrated circuit packaging and testing. it is the top three closed testing enterprises of integrated circuits in China.

Tongfu Weidian was established in October 1997. In 2015, the company acquired the Suzhou and Penang plants held by AMD China, completed the magnificent turn from the supply of AMD to OSAT, and achieved the goal of the two plants' advanced flip chip closed testing technology and the company's original technology complementary, thus accounting for more than 70% of the company's advanced packaging sales revenue.

At present, the packaging technology of Tonfu Micro Power includes advanced closed testing technology such as Bumping, WLCSP, FC, BGA, SiP, traditional packaging technology such as QFN, QFP, SO, and packaging technology such as automotive electronic products, MEMS, etc.; testing technology includes wafer testing, system testing and so on.

So far, mainland manufacturers account for 30% of the top 10 closed testing manufacturers in the world, which is a testament to the rapid development of the mainland's sealing and testing industry in recent years. By observing the changes in the past decade, it is not difficult to find that the speed of vertical and horizontal integration of the global closed testing industry is increasing in recent years.

Mainland VS Taiwan

Closed testing is a labor-intensive + capital-intensive industry. Take Sunlight and Changdian as an example, there are 68000 employees, 80 billion yuan in fixed assets, 23600 employees and 15.2 billion yuan in fixed assets. Only by being bigger and stronger can we have technological research and development, so market size often becomes the decisive factor of enterprises, and enterprises become industry leaders through continuous mergers and acquisitions, such as Changdian's acquisition of Star Jinpeng into the top three, Huatian's acquisition of Unisem, the merger of Sunmoon and Silicon products, and the acquisition of Japan's J-Device company to consolidate its second position.

Some people in the industry have pointed out that Hayes's acceleration of non-American substitution is an important reason for accelerating the localization of the semiconductor industry chain, especially the closed testing industry. Under the background that supply chain security is highly valued, mainland closed testing enterprises, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd and Riyueguang will all be the beneficiaries of the rapid growth of Hess orders. In the highest-end chip products, the integrated fan-out and other advanced packaging technology one-stop service model provided by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd has a leading advantage, and mainland enterprises still do not have the ability to undertake for the time being. In other products, Changdian Technology will become the main beneficiary of Hayes closed test order transfer.
From the perspective of the whole competition pattern and future trend of semiconductor closed testing, this war between enterprises has evolved into a battle between the semiconductor industry of the mainland and Taiwan. In recent years, the rise of the semiconductor industry in mainland China is obvious to all. Closed test manufacturers such as Changdian Technology, Tianshui Huatian and Tongfu Micropower maintained double-digit revenue growth in 2017, and their performance was better than that of the global IC closed testing industry. These are all very positive phenomena.

But it is not easy to go further. Through years of acquisition, leading Sun and Moon has gradually set up an "integrated semiconductor closed test center", allowing customers to complete wafer testing, packaging, chip testing and end product system manufacturing at one time. By contrast, Changdian Technology has just started in the integration of M & An and international vision, but the merger and acquisition of Star Jinpeng, which is much larger than its own, has taken a key step. What the future pattern will be remains to be seen.