Top Searched Product Categories and Brands in February: Overall Trend Continues Previous Pattern, Confirming the Upward Price Trend

Regarding popular categories: Search volumes for most categories decreased month-over-month. Hot categories experiencing price increases, such as Flash memory, DRAM, and MOSFETs, maintained their previous positions, closely reflecting market conditions. For popular brands: The month-over-month decline in search volume was roughly equal across brands, and the ranking order remained largely unchanged from before. Nexperia remained near the top of the list, while Diodes moved up in ranking.

TOP 50 Hot Search Index for Chips in February: Category Proportions Remain Broadly Stable, Aligning with Price Rises and Application-Side Hotspots

The TOP 50 hot search models for February continued the previous pattern where memory (DRAM, NAND/NOR Flash, etc.) and IMU devices accounted for a significant share. Coinciding with the Chinese New Year holiday, industry work was concluding, and actual search volumes for components in February were at a yearly low. However, the list still featured several models showing "counter-trend" growth, covering brands like TI, ST, Renesas, and several memory manufacturers. The categories involved include power/analog, IMUs, power stage modules, and memory, all closely linked to the current industry-wide price increase dynamics and key demand areas. In terms of price, various memory types on the list continued their multi-month upward trend, consistent with the overall market, and other popular components were also mostly experiencing price increases.

Top 20 Surge in Search Index for Chips in February: Aligning with Price Trends and Key Application Areas

Among components experiencing a surge in search volume in February, memory accounted for a significant portion, covering popular categories like DRAM, NOR Flash, and eMMC flash, aligning with the overall market trend. Several motion sensing devices also made the list, reflecting key demand-side hotspots. The remaining components included power devices, FPGAs, power semiconductors, diodes, and other categories. Overall, the surging components in the month pointed to application areas such as industrial, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, networking/communication, and servers.

Top 10 Models with Rising and Falling Inventory in February: Revealing Market Supply and Demand Dynamics

The inventory increase/decrease lists visually present the changes in stock quantity for specific models in the market. Analyzing these changes in conjunction with search volume and price trends helps to understand the supply and demand dynamics of components, thereby aiding in making informed procurement decisions. The top ten models showing the largest inventory increase and decrease in February are listed below:

IC Demand and Supply

In February, spot market activity significantly decreased due to the Chinese New Year holiday. However, the collective upward pricing trend in the supply chain still had various impacts. For ICs, attention for some TI models surged significantly; ADI's price increases took effect, impacting the spot market; Infineon initiated a new round of price hikes, leading to industry-wide follow-on increases in the power semiconductor sector. MCU products from ST, NXP, and Microchip remained relatively stable.

The underlying upward price trend in the memory market continued. The production capacity allocated to AI-related products squeezed supply for general-purpose products, directly affecting price changes for mainstream products. Prices for standard DRAM and NAND flash products continued to rise during the month, with expectations for Q1 contract price increases also being significantly revised upward. Reports also emerged of industry inventory levels reaching extremely low points. NOR Flash prices also increased significantly, directly linked to incremental demand from areas like AI servers and automotive electronics. The price surge for niche products like SLC/MLC NAND and DDR3/DDR4 DRAM remained strong, driven by a combination of a significant supply gap and rigid application-side demand, sustaining the upward momentum.

For passive components, MLCCs also entered a price increase phase following successive rounds of hikes for tantalum capacitors, resistors, and ferrite beads. The reasons behind the increases are still driven by AI demand and rising upstream costs. During the month, major manufacturers like Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Murata, and Yageo indicated potential price hikes. Furthermore, new price increase movements were reported in the connector sector.