Author: Feng Ning the net loss attributable to owners of the company
The semiconductor industry in 2026 is being continuously stirred by a price hike wave ignited by AI demand.
Since the second half of 2025, memory chips have fired the first shot of price hikes. Spot prices for products such as DDR4 and NAND flash memory have more than tripled, soaring all the way. Following memory chips, the wave of price increases in the power semiconductor sector has rapidly spread. In March 2026, domestic leaders such as NCE Power, Macmic, and Silan Microelectronics collectively issued price adjustment notices, raising prices of core products such as MOSFETs and IGBTs by at least 10%.
Now, following the price hikes in memory and power semiconductors, analog chips have also joined this game of price increases.
Previously, voices of "cycle bottoming out," "demand recovery," and "bottom rebound" repeatedly emerged in the industry, but the analog chip market consistently lacked substantive recovery signals. It was not until March 2026 that this pattern was completely broken.
01. The "Wolf" Has Truly Arrived
Since March, the global analog chip industry has witnessed an intensive wave of price hikes.
It is reported that the global analog chip giant Texas Instruments (TI) is expected to launch its second comprehensive price hike starting April 1. The price increase is as high as 15%-85%, and the coverage may include all customers, involving multiple core products such as digital isolators, isolated driver chips, and PMICs (Power Management ICs). Previously, in August last year, TI announced price adjustments for over 60,000 part numbers under its portfolio, with increases generally ranging from 10% to 30%, and even higher for some scarce models. This round of price hikes covers almost its entire product line, including analog chips (such as PMICs and signal chain products), embedded processors (such as MCUs (Microcontroller Units) and DSPs), and logic devices.
The global analog chip giant NXP Semiconductors recently also issued a price hike letter, officially announcing price adjustments for some products starting April 1, 2026. This price adjustment is affected by rising costs in multiple links such as raw materials and energy, and multiple supports will be provided to ensure the smooth execution of the adjustment.
At the end of 2025, another analog chip giant, Analog Devices, Inc. (ADI), also issued a price hike letter: the company will adjust product prices, and the price adjustments will apply to all shipped products starting February 1, 2026.
The intensive price adjustment actions of the above-mentioned analog chip giants have sparked widespread discussion in the industry. Amid the market narrative of "cycle reversal," a rational review is even more necessary: is this truly a signal of comprehensive industry recovery, or are there other deep-seated reasons?
02. What Strategy is TI Really Playing?
To understand the true intention behind this round of price hikes, let us turn our memory back to 2022.
In this year, TI's 12-inch wafer fabs such as RFAB2 and LFAB were successively put into production, and its cost advantage surged—compared to 8-inch wafers, 12-inch wafers can reduce the die cost per chip by more than 40%. Over the next two years, armed with the "cost slaughter knife," TI began to strike frequently.
From 2023 to 2024, the price war initiated by TI in the general-purpose analog chip market can hardly be described as "fierce." The prices of some PMICs dropped directly from several dollars to a few cents, a decrease of over 60%. During those two years, the gross profit margins of domestic analog chip companies were slashed to pieces, with some even going directly from profitability to losses. Naturally, TI's gross profit margin also slid all the way from 67.47% in 2021 to 58.14% in 2024.
Do you think TI was losing money? Wrong. TI was trading profits for market share, using its low-cost advantage to squeeze the survival space of domestic manufacturers. The logic is simple: when performance is stable and prices are lower, naturally more customers flow to TI.
What about now? Why have these analog chip leaders suddenly turned their guns around and started raising prices? From the author's perspective, there are mainly four layers of intention.
The first layer of intention: cost transmission.
As NXP stated in its price hike letter, the costs of raw materials, energy, labor, and logistics are all rising. From the upstream raw material end, the pressure has long been transmitted layer by layer. Prices of key metals required for semiconductor production, such as copper, silver, and palladium, have continued to rise, constantly refreshing historical highs, directly pushing up basic material costs. Meanwhile, prices of various packaging materials have even doubled, further eroding the already meager profit margins of manufacturers. Although these analog giants have their own fabs, some chips still adopt the external foundry model.
In the foundry and packaging & testing links, price hikes and capacity shortages are playing out simultaneously. As the core capacity carrier for analog chips, the foundry quotes for 8-inch wafers have been continuously raised since the second half of 2025, with the overall industry increase generally reaching 5% to 20%. Taking SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation) as an example, its foundry price for the 8-inch BCD process has been raised by about 10%; vendors such as VIS and UMC have also followed suit. What is even more severe is that global wafer foundry leaders are withdrawing from the 8-inch track one after another—TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) has been gradually reducing its 8-inch capacity since 2025 and plans to completely halt production at some facilities in 2027; Samsung has also actively cut production during the same period, directly shutting down the 8-inch production line at its S7 fab in the Giheung complex. Mature process nodes already face tight capacity, coupled with the strong squeeze of resources by AI chips, making the packaging & testing end increasingly strained, further pushing up the cost level of the entire production process.
It should be known that over 70% of global analog chips are mass-produced relying on 8-inch production lines. This production line is the core capacity support for industry development, but the current 8-inch wafer capacity has fallen into a situation of decreasing stock and insufficient increment. Data from TrendForce shows that the global total 8-inch foundry capacity will shrink by 2.4% in 2026.
The second layer of intention: AI demand explosion and structural supply-demand imbalance
This is the most direct trigger, and also the most easily misunderstood one.
What is truly exploded by AI are specific categories such as high-end server PMICs, digital isolators, and high-speed interface chips. The power consumption of an AI server is 8 to 12 times that of a traditional server, and the demand for PMICs has grown by several or even more than ten times. And precisely these products are the core hinterland of TI and ADI. When NVIDIA's B200 and subsequent AI chips are in short supply, the supporting PMICs must also keep up. This issue circles back to the insufficient capacity of 8-inch wafer foundry. Therefore, the second intention is very clear: to conduct "premium harvesting" in sectors with scarce capacity. This is not a general price hike, but a structural one.
The third layer of intention: reshaping supply and demand expectations, clearing low-price inventory
The price war over the past two years has led to a massive backlog of low-price inventory in the distribution channels. If customers all go to the channels for low-priced goods, the original manufacturers will naturally find it hard to sell. Therefore, after the release of a new round of price hike letters, the inventory in the hands of distributors instantly gains an "appreciation expectation." This price increase directly activates the vitality of the channels and also helps clear the "low-price inventory" left over from the price war in the past two years, facilitating inventory digestion.
The fourth layer of intention: the real open strategy
Before understanding the fourth layer of intention, one must consider a question: why did TI lower prices in the past two years? Because it wanted to curb the momentum of domestic manufacturers. During those two years, domestic analog companies sprang up like mushrooms and rapidly expanded their product lines. TI had to use price means to slow down this process. During those two years, domestic analog companies indeed had a hard time, with news of losses, layoffs, and failed IPOs everywhere.
So why are they raising prices now? Because the price war has been fought to this point, and the opponents that should be washed out have been mostly eliminated. The domestic companies that survived either have their own technological advantages or are bound to core major customers. Relying solely on a price war, it is hard to wash these companies out again. Since the marginal benefits of the price war are diminishing, it is better to change the tactic: raise prices to thicken the profit margin, and at the same time use higher profits to support R&D and secure a position for next-generation products.
Against this backdrop, domestic manufacturers are also caught in a dilemma. It should be known that the customers of domestic companies are mainly concentrated in consumer electronics and mid-to-low-end industrial control, where price sensitivity is extremely high. Moreover, the inventory levels of domestic companies follow a different logic from overseas ones. In the past two years, in order to seize the market, many domestic companies still have a lot of inventory that has not been fully digested. Following the price hike may cause them to lose the hard-won market share; if they do not raise prices, their profit margins will be continuously compressed, leading to insufficient investment, and they may lose the initiative in the competition for next-generation products.
This also basically corroborates the explanation of the market situation given by Halo Micro when issuing the price hike letter on March 1 this year: this round of price adjustments is mainly driven by the cost pressure brought by the structural supply-demand imbalance in the mature process node field; at present, an industry-wide price hike wave has not yet formed.
As of press time, no large-scale price hike wave among domestic analog chip companies has been seen yet.
03. What is the Situation of Domestic Analog Chip Companies?
With overseas giants raising prices, the price war receding, and the industry cycle warming up, domestic analog chip manufacturers, which seem to be under passive pressure, have actually ushered in an unprecedented window of development.
From a policy perspective, China has imposed additional tariffs on analog chips originating from the United States and launched anti-dumping investigations, weakening the price advantages of international giants such as Texas Instruments and Analog Devices, and making room in the market for domestic chips.
From the perspective of downstream demand, the number of analog chips used in a single NEVs (New Energy Vehicle) exceeds 500. Scenarios such as intelligent driving and in-vehicle entertainment have seen a surge in demand for PMICs and signal chain chips. Domestic automotive-grade chips are gradually entering the supply chains of automakers such as BYD and NIO. AI servers have a strong demand for high-density PMICs and signal chain chips, and domestic enterprises such as SG Micro and 3PEAK have entered the relevant markets. The demand for high-precision analog chips in fields such as industrial robots and smart grids is growing by over 20% annually, and domestic chips have achieved breakthroughs in sub-sectors such as isolation and sensing.
From the perspective of technological breakthroughs and product upgrades, most enterprises have achieved stable mass production in mature process nodes (such as 40nm and above). Some enterprises have broken through the 28nm process, and the performance of high-precision ADC and DAC chips is benchmarked against international levels. In addition, enterprises such as SG Micro and Novosense have formed a product matrix covering multiple categories such as signal chain, PMIC, and RF through mergers and acquisitions and integration, meeting customers' one-stop needs.
At present, domestic analog chips are in a superposition period of "domestic substitution + demand growth + technological breakthroughs." In the short term, they benefit from policy and tariff factors, and in the long term, they benefit from the expansion of downstream applications and technological upgrades. They are expected to achieve a larger market share in high-end fields such as automotive, AI, and industrial sectors.
The triple benefits of policy, demand, and technology are being solidly transformed into the growth momentum of business performance for domestic analog chip enterprises. The financial report data of multiple leading manufacturers in 2025 intuitively display the growth picture during the industry development window period:
In 2025, 3PEAK achieved a total operating revenue of 2.142 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 75.65%; net profit attributable to the parent company was 173 million RMB, compared to a loss of 197 million RMB in the same period last year, achieving a turnaround from loss to profit.
In 2025, Novosense's total annual operating revenue was about 3.368 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 71.80%; net loss attributable to owners of the parent company was about 241 million RMB, narrowing by 40.2% year-on-year.
In 2025, Joulwatt's annual operating revenue was 2.659 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 58.37%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was -717 million RMB; basic earnings per share were -1.60 RMB.
In 2025, Southchip's annual operating revenue was 3.261 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 27.03%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 238 million RMB, a year-on-year decrease of 22.42%.
In 2025, Chipown's total operating revenue was about 1.143 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 18.47%; net profit attributable to the parent company was about 186 million RMB, a year-on-year increase of 67.34%.
In 2025, Awinic's annual operating revenue was 2.854 billion RMB, a year-on-year decrease of 2.71%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 317 million RMB, a year-on-year increase of 24.20%.
In 2025, Maxscend's total operating revenue was 3.726 billion RMB, a year-on-year decrease of 16.96%; net profit attributable to the parent company recorded a loss of 268 million RMB, a year-on-year decrease of 166.70%.
In 2025, BPS Semi achieved an operating revenue of 1.57 billion RMB, a year-on-year increase of 4.4%; net profit attributable to the parent company was 35.6046 million RMB, achieving a turnaround from loss to profit year-on-year.