(Yicai Global) April 10 -- China's semiconductor market is diverging as the demand for chips used in cars is soaring while that of sensors used to control consumer electronics is declining as the 2022 earnings of two major suppliers, StarPower Semiconductor and Will Semiconductor, shows.

This year, semiconductor demand in the sectors of automobiles and industrial power supply is still considerable, an executive in charge of a semiconductor designer said to Yicai Global. Inventories of smartphones, as well as relevant parts, are expected to return to normal levels by June while the balance of supply and demand could improve in the second half, the executive added.

Manufacturers were churning out more cars but fewer phones and computers last year as the case of two companies that reported their best and worst annual results proves. 

StarPower, which makes power modules for cars, more than doubled its net profit during the year of surging new energy vehicle sales due to rising demand for insulated-gate bipolar transistors, used in photovoltaic energy storage systems and cars, according to the Jiaxing-based company's annual earnings report. Revenue surged nearly 59 percent. 

StarPower manufactured 9.2 million IGBTs last year and sold 9.8 million units, with a final inventory of 390,000 units as of Dec. 31, 2022. Sales tallied around CNY2.2 billion (USD323.7 million), making up a rising share of almost 83 percent of the firm's total. 

WillSemi, the world's third-biggest seller of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor sensors used in cameras, was not as lucky. The firm's net profit slumped by 78 percent to CNY990 million (USD144 million) in 2022, marking the worst performance since its listing six years ago, as prices and orders of chips used in devices such as smartphones and computers fell, according to its latest earnings report. Revenue fell 17 percent to CNY20.1 billion (USD2.9 billion).

WillSemi produced about 1.4 billion CMOS last year, but only sold 987 million units. The firm's year-end inventory of CMOS exceeded its sales as WillSemi had 1.4 billion units in store as of Dec. 31, 2022, up by 37 percent year-over-year.

The company blamed the shrinking market for the decline, as global shipments of smartphones tallied only 303 million units in the fourth quarter, down 19 percent from a year earlier, the biggest single-quarter decrease in history, per the earnings report.

However, WillSemi's automotive business was quite impressive as its related image sensor sales surged by 57 percent to about CNY3.6 billion (USD528.5 million) in 2022, but the segment was too small to buoy its total performance.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi