By Li Panpan

China's IC design industry's trade organization ICCAD started its annual gathering, announcing the 2022 number of IC design companies in the country at 3,243, up 15.4% year on year, with expected industry sales reaching RMB534.57 billion ($76.62 billion) in 2022, an increase of 16.5%.

The state of the industry statistics was announced by Wei Shaojun, the vice president of the China Semiconductor Industry Association (CSIA) and president of ICCAD, who delivered his keynote speech at the annual conference on December 26 in Xiamen of southeastern China’s Fujian Province.

Under the title “Winning a bright future with continuous innovation,” Wei said, "Despite the impact of global production capacity shortage, the pandemic, and US export controls, China’s IC design industry still maintains a rapid development trend. "

The global chip shortage has pushed downstream manufacturers to increase the purchase of integrated circuits, boosting the market and prices.

Wei gave more details on the industry: Among the top ten cities ranked by the growth rate of the IC design industry, Wuhan in central China's Hubei Province ranked first with a growth rate of 98.0%, followed by Chengdu with 55.3%.

Among the top ten cities ranked by the IC design industry scale, Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen continue to occupy the top three, and the threshold for entering the top 10 cities this year has been raised to RMB12.2 billion ($1.75 billion).

The threshold for entering the top 10 IC design companies in China this year has increased from RMB6.6 billion ($950 million) last year to RMB7 billion ($1 billion), and three of the top 10 companies experienced negative growth.

The development of enterprises has encountered a bottleneck. Statistics show that although the industry experienced overall growth, the development of leading enterprises is not ideal, especially that of the top ten enterprises is lackluster.

Regarding personnel, 34 companies in the IC design industry have more than 1,000 employees this year, and 63 companies have 500-1,000 employees, an increase of two and 12 over the previous year, respectively.

In terms of products, consumer chips experienced the fastest growth, reaching 24.7%, followed by multimedia chips, with an increase of 22.5% in 2022.

More than 2,700 small and mini enterprises with fewer than 100 employees are too much for the industry, dispersing valuable industrial resources.

The talent shortage has become an important factor hindering development. By 2024, the industry-wide talent gap will be as high as 220,000, and the gap in the design field will reach 120,000.

In the capital market of the IC design industry, 25 design companies have achieved IPOs this year as of December 26. Seventy-three chip design companies have been listed during the past 73 years, with a total market value of RMB1,756.06 billion ($251.69 billion) as of this December.

For the industry’s future development, it’s important to have a clear mind, ensure the security of the supply chain, strengthen technological innovation and make full use of China's huge market, Wei pointed out.