TSMC's Market Share Falls Slightly
Samsung Electronics saw its share of the global foundry market increase in the second quarter of this year, while Taiwan's TSMC, the world’s No. 1 foundry company, suffered a setback.
TrendForce released second-quarter market share rankings of the top 10 global foundry giants on Sept. 27. TSMC retained the top spot with US$18,145 million, up 3.5 percent from the previous year. However, its market share fell from 53.6 percent in the previous quarter to 53.4 percent.
TSMC’s sales increased thanks to demand for chips from high-performance computing (HPC), the internet of things (IoT) and automotive sectors. The company's sales from its 5- and 4-nm processes increased 11.1 percent from the previous quarter as Nvidia, AMD, China-based Bitmain, and HPC-related customers continued to launch new products, TrendForce explained.
Samsung Electronics logged a market share of 16.5 percent, up 0.2 percentage points from the previous quarter (16.3 percent). Its sales reached US$5,588 million, up 4.9 percent from the previous quarter (US$5,328 million).
Samsung Electronics could increase sales by improving its yield while converting its 7- and 6-nm processes into 5- and 4-nm processes. Notably, it started mass production of 3-nm chips using gate all around (GAA) technology at the end of the second quarter. The first customer of its 3-nm technology is PanSemi, a Chinese fabless company that makes application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for bitcoin mining. However, TrendForce said the 3-nm process will make little contribution to Samsung sales growth until the end of this year as its mass-production of 3-nam chips is at the starting point.
Samsung was followed by Taiwan’s UMC, GlobalFoundries of the U.S. and China’s SMIC. UMC recorded US$2,448 million in sales in the second quarter, posting a 7.2 percent market share, up 0.3 percentage points from the previous quarter. GlobalFoundries logged US$1,993 million in sales with a 5.9 percent market share. SMIC accounted for 5.6 percent with US$1,903 million in sales.