Greater Challenge
The gap between Korea’s Samsung Electronics and Taiwan’s TSMC in the global foundry market further widened in the fourth quarter of last year. With the foundry market declining by 4.7 percent from the previous quarter, both companies experienced a drop in sales, but TSMC was less affected than Samsung Electronics.
According to Taiwanese market research firm Trendforce on Wednesday, in the fourth quarter of last year, first-place TSMC held a 58.5 percent share of the foundry market, while second-ranked Samsung Electronics had a 15.8 percent share. Their market share gap stood at 42.7 percentage points, wider than 40.6 percentage points in the previous quarter. Also in the previous quarter, TSMC chalked up 56.1 percent and Samsung 15.5 percent.
“TSMC was able to increase its market share as its foundry competitors underperformed,” TrendForce said. “Samsung lost a large share of its orders as Qualcomm and Nvidia placed orders for sub-7-nm semiconductors for flagship products with other companies.”
In fact, the global foundry industry as a whole posted a decline in revenue in the fourth quarter of last year as foundry customers, fabless companies that specialize in semiconductor design, decreased their orders due to inventory issues. While TSMC and Samsung Electronics, both at the cutting edge of technology, saw quarter-over-quarter revenue declines of 1 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively, mid-tier foundry companies were hit harder. They were a 12.7 percent drop in revenue for third-place UMC, 27.3 percent for PSMC and 30.3 percent for VIS. UMC, PSMC, and VIS are also Taiwanese companies.
China’s SMIC and Hwahong Semiconductor also recorded drops of 15 to 26 percent. In the aftermath of this, China’s Nexchip dropped out of the top 10 list, and DB HiTek, a mid-sized foundry company in Korea, joined the top 10 club instead.