Due to the continuous correction of overall supply chain inventory, coupled with the impact of traditional consumer off-season, market demand is still weak, except for some new product launches driving buying and supply chain inventory replenishment. Therefore, TrendForce Chibang Consulting expects that the revenue of the top ten IC design companies in the first quarter of this year will continue to decline, but the month on month decline will slightly converge.
Weak terminal demand and inventory correction, with MediaTek, the top five companies, being the hardest hit
The cooling consumer market and customer inventory correction were the reasons for the decline in revenue for most IC design companies in the fourth quarter. Qualcomm's smartphone and IoT product business revenue decreased by 22.6% and 16.2%, respectively, month on month, resulting in a contraction of revenue in the fourth quarter to $7.89 billion, a decrease of 20.3% month on month, and the total revenue ranking still ranks first. Broadcom ranked second this time, with revenue increasing by 2.4% month on month to approximately $7.1 billion, mainly supported by business revenue from server storage applications, broadband, and wireless networks, offsetting the impact of inventory correction.
NVIDIA's revenue in the fourth quarter reached $5.93 billion, a decrease of 2.7% compared to the previous two quarters, showing a significant convergence. This was mainly supported by factors such as the launch of RTX 40 series high-end graphics cards and stable demand for automotive products. Revenue in the gaming and automotive sectors both increased, offsetting some of the decline in data centers and professional visualization. AMD's revenue increased by 0.6% month on month, benefiting from the increased penetration rate of data center customer EPYC platform CPU adoption and the acquisition of Xilinx to drive businesses such as FPGA and DPU, resulting in an overall revenue of $5.6 billion. MediaTek's main business relies on smartphones and other consumer product chips, which has the greatest impact on revenue. Revenue in all product areas has declined, with smartphone related business revenue falling by about 30% month on month. In the fourth quarter, revenue was only $3.45 billion, a decrease of up to 26.2% month on month.
The most obvious change from sixth to tenth place this time is for Novatek to squeeze out Realtek to seventh place. Lianyong's revenue in the fourth quarter reached 715 million US dollars, an increase of 11.2% compared to the previous quarter, making it the industry with the most growth in the fourth quarter. It officially ended the consecutive decline in revenue for four consecutive seasons, indicating that the panel industry had reached a lower level since inventory correction in the fourth quarter of 2021, and had started to restart the stocking cycle by the end of the fourth quarter of last year. Therefore, Lianyong benefited from inventory replenishment of TV related components such as TV SoC, Tcon, LDDI, etc, The revenue of SoC and Drive IC, two major businesses, increased by 2.1% and 16.1% respectively month on month, squeezing Ruiyu back to seventh place while other competitors are still at a low point of inventory correction. Relatively speaking, due to unfavorable factors such as weak demand for PCs and laptops, and loss of Ethernet orders, Ruiyu's business contraction decreased to $690 million in the fourth quarter, a decrease of nearly 30% compared to the previous quarter.
It is also worth mentioning that Apple, as a major customer of Cirrus Logic, contributed over 80% of revenue, and even nearly 90% during the peak shipping season. Therefore, in the fourth quarter, benefiting from the new iPhone dividend, Cirrus Logic's revenue increased by 9.3% month on month to reach $590 million. However, this also indicates that the fluctuation in demand for Apple smartphones is the decisive factor affecting the revenue increase and decrease of Sirui Logic, especially in the first quarter, which is the off-season for smartphone shipments. Apple's new phone dividend has subsided, and revenue may face a more obvious recession. Other businesses such as Marvell's revenue in the fourth quarter was 1.46 billion US dollars, a decrease of 4.8% compared to the previous quarter, with revenue in the storage server application sector experiencing the largest decline; Will Semiconductor, on the other hand, benefited from some Android camp's demand for new machine stock, with revenue increasing by 2.7% month on month to approximately $530 million.
