Reported by NUPIAO News | Song Jianan
The semiconductor industry is once again in the throes of a price hike cycle, driven by a confluence of supply-demand dynamics and escalating costs.
According to reports from multiple media outlets, including 21st Century Business Herald, several domestic and international semiconductor companies have been sending out price adjustment notices to their customers since the start of August. The analog chip and RF chip sectors have emerged as the epicenters of this round of price corrections. Official customer notification documents that have surfaced reveal that STMicroelectronics, Analog Devices (ADI), and Maxscend have all confirmed new supply prices effective in the second half of the year.
STMicroelectronics, a global leader in power semiconductors and MCUs, boasts extensive product coverage across the industrial, automotive electronics, and consumer electronics sectors. This semiconductor giant, headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, has already initiated its third product price adjustment within 2026. Notices sent to its customers indicate that a new round of price increases will take effect on August 23rd, spanning multiple product lines.
Explaining the reasons behind the hike, Jerome Roux, President of Sales and Marketing at STMicroelectronics, stated in the notice that semiconductor demand across several industries has seen substantial growth for consecutive quarters, placing sustained pressure on the global supply chain. Consequently, significant price adjustments have occurred across the entire supply chain, including transportation, energy, raw materials, and manufacturing services.
Back in late May, NUPIAO reported that STMicroelectronics had sent a “Price Adjustment Notice” to customers, announcing price increases on select products effective June 28th. This marked another price adjustment following the one announced on March 24th. Prior to this, international power semiconductor giants like Infineon and Texas Instruments had also issued price hike notices. Additionally, domestic MCU manufacturers such as Zhongwei Semiconductor and Nations Technologies have also raised their prices.
Following in STMicroelectronics’ footsteps, international analog giant ADI has also implemented a fresh round of price adjustments. ADI is a leading global player in analog signal processing chips, with its products extensively used in industrial control, communications, and high-reliability military equipment. According to the official letter sent to its customers, this round of price adjustments across its full product portfolio will officially take effect on September 13, 2026. This marks ADI’s second price hike this year, with the first having taken effect on February 1st.
Katsu Nakamura, Chief Customer Officer at ADI, wrote in the notification letter, “As we continue to strive for new supply and expand capacity, our business is encountering unprecedented demand growth across all fronts, while simultaneously bearing immense cost pressures. At the same time, inflationary pressures and manufacturing costs throughout the entire semiconductor supply ecosystem continue to climb.”
Domestic RF chip leader Maxscend has also joined this round of price adjustments. Jiangsu Maxscend Microelectronics Company is a core local player in RF front-end chips, with products used in smartphones and wireless communication devices.
On August 10th, Maxscend issued a “Product Price Adjustment Notice,” announcing a price increase for its entire series of RF products starting September 1st. The notice pointed out that since 2026, the global semiconductor supply chain has been under persistent strain, with prices for upstream raw materials like silicon wafers, non-ferrous metals, packaging materials, and chemicals continuing to rise. Concurrently, wafer foundry and packaging/testing capacity is becoming increasingly tight. This, coupled with the supply chain shortages triggered by the explosive demand for AI computing power, has led to continuously rising chip manufacturing costs. The original pricing structure is no longer sufficient to cover the ever-increasing operational expenses. This is Maxscend’s first price adjustment this year.
On August 11th, NUPIAO learned from Nations Technologies that the company will increase prices on certain products by 10% to 20% starting October 1st. This adjustment primarily involves high-performance MCUs, which are mainly used in industrial, AI power supply, and digital power applications.
Nations Technologies told NUPIAO that recently, delivery times for related products from some international competitors have generally lengthened, leading to market shortages. As a result, customer demand for domestic alternatives is increasing. At the same time, with the growth in AI-related demand, some upstream capacity is being squeezed, altering the supply-demand landscape.
Compared to the semiconductor price surge in the first half of this year, the focus of this new round has shifted to the mature process node segment. Meanwhile, the magnitude of price increases for memory chips has moderated, transitioning to high-level fluctuations. AI computing power not only consumes high-end advanced process capacity but also significantly occupies 8-inch mature wafer capacity, squeezing the available production capacity for RF, industrial analog, and automotive-grade MCUs. Even without a rebound in consumer electronics terminal demand, the tight capacity in mature wafer foundries is directly driving up costs across the entire manufacturing chain.
The price increases in the first half of the year were initially driven by AI memory chips like HBM and server DRAM. Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron were the first to significantly raise memory contract prices, with some server storage segments seeing extremely high quarterly gains, serving as the core engine of the market trend. This subsequently spread to analog, power, and passive components, resulting in an overall pattern of “memory leading the increase, other categories following suit.” At that time, the siphoning effect of AI on mature process capacity wasn’t fully apparent; the price hikes were more directly attributable to order surges for the corresponding products themselves.
Some analysts believe that the capacity expansion cycle for analog and power semiconductors typically takes 18-24 months. The pace of releasing new capacity in the short term will struggle to match the incremental demand derived from industrial and AI applications, suggesting that price resilience will persist for a while. However, downstream manufacturers have a ceiling on their cost absorption capacity. If price hikes continue to escalate, downstream players will resort to substituting part numbers and adjusting inventory levels to hedge against cost pressures, which in turn could constrain the headroom for chipmakers to implement further significant price increases.
For downstream customers, successive price adjustments mean higher procurement costs. However, in their notification documents, major manufacturers almost universally tie the price adjustments to supply security guarantees, indicating that a portion of the revenue from the price increases is used to absorb costs, while another portion is invested in capacity expansion to alleviate supply chain tightness.
In the short term, the likelihood of price declines for analog, RF, and power chips is low. However, the market is not on a one-way upward trajectory. Downstream cost tolerance and fluctuations in global macroeconomic demand will both serve as key variables influencing the future direction of semiconductor prices.
