Source Financial Times article

Summary

Demand for artificial intelligence-enabled smartphones could help to protect parts of the semiconductor industry from a “vicious” downturn if investment in data centres slows, said the chief executive of the world’s largest provider of chip testing machines.

A fall-off “may not last long and then it may go right back up, but because of the concentration [of hyperscalers] right now in the market, any slowdown in the data centre buildout is going to have big reverberations in the supply chain”, said Lefever.

In contrast, demand for AI smartphones was “kind of slow” but could take off rapidly, Lefever said.