According to channel sources, on June 1, US time, MCU giant Microchip sent a letter to customers, informing them that some of its products will increase the price by 7% after 45 days (ie, July 15). It can be seen from the email that the price adjustment products include ATTINY, ATMEGA, ATXMEGA series and 8051 series products based on AVR architecture.

It is understood that Microchip acquired Atmel in 2016, obtained the latter's AVR architecture authorization, and introduced several new products to the market. However, for the relatively mature and old AVR and 8051 series, the cost of maintaining their production is getting higher and higher. Because the above products are still widely used in the industry, Microchip maintains its supply while increasing prices to maintain profitability.

IC original factory price adjustment has always been the most important trend in the industry, and this time Microchip issued a price increase letter naturally caused a lot of discussion. Among them, some believe that Microchip maintains the supply of old materials, and the price increase is understandable, and subsequent new products will be launched with more cost-effective, but some analysis pointed out that the surface of Microchip is to improve the profit margin of the AVR product line, but it is actually intentional to increase Microchip's original product PIC series MCU market share.



It is understood that among the two companies that were merged, Microchip's product line supports the MIPS architecture, Atmel supports the ARM architecture, and both companies also have their own architectures, which are Microchip's PIC architecture and Atmel's AVR architecture.



Therefore, the two companies each have a variety of structures that have continued, and the integration and maintenance of the product line will inevitably produce "wear and tear costs," and these additional costs, the original factory will certainly allow customers to share part. Microchip's price increase can indeed be understood from this new perspective.



AVR series MCUs as the industry's "hot" products, such as ATMEGA32A-AU; ATMEGA128A-AU; ATMEGA2560-16AU; ATMEGA328P-AU; ATMEGA644PA-AU; ATTINY1614-SSNR; ATTINY85-20PU and other common models are also hot search models.