The gap in market share between Taiwan’s TSMC, the industry foundry leader, and Samsung Electronics, which ranks second, has widened again in the third quarter of this year.
According to market research firm TrendForce on Dec. 6, Samsung Electronics’ foundry sales for the third quarter (July to September) of this year amounted to US$3.69 billion, a 14.1% increase from the previous quarter. Its market share rose from 11.7% to 12.4%, an increase of 0.7 percentage points.
TrendForce attributed Samsung Electronics’ robust growth to orders for Qualcomm’s mid-to-low-end 5th generation AP System-on-Chip (SoC), 5G modems, and 28-nanometer (nm) Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) Display Driver ICs (DDI).
Despite maintaining double-digit growth rates since the previous quarter, Samsung Electronics saw its gap with TSMC widen further. TSMC, after a brief slowdown in the second quarter, rebounded strongly in the third quarter.
TSMC’s third-quarter sales reached US$17.249 billion, a 10.2% increase from the second quarter. Its market share rose from 56.4% to 57.9%, expanding the gap with Samsung Electronics from 44.7 percentage points to 45.5 percentage points.
TSMC’s sales were driven by increased orders for smartphone and PC semiconductors, including the iPhone 15. Its advanced 3-nm products alone accounted for 6% of its sales, while products using 7-nm or more advanced processes constituted about 60% of its total sales.
The gap between the two companies, which was 50.1 percentage points in the first quarter, had narrowed slightly in the second quarter but widened again in the third quarter as TSMC’s growth accelerated.
Meanwhile, U.S.-based GlobalFoundries maintained its third position with sales of US$1.85 billion, similar to the previous quarter. Taiwan’s UMC (6.0%), China’s SMIC (5.4%), and China’s Hua Hong Group (2.6%) saw their market shares decline compared to the second quarter.
The total foundry market sales for the third quarter were US$28.29 billion, a 7.9% increase from the previous quarter. TrendForce expects the growth rate to exceed the third-quarter level in the fourth quarter, driven by increased demand for smartphones and laptops during the year-end holiday season.