TSMC Invests 3 Times More Than Samsung
The gap between TSMC and Samsung Electronics, the top two players in the global foundry market, widened further in the first quarter of this year.
Samsung Electronics' global foundry market share in the first quarter shrank 1 percentage point to 17 percent compared to the previous quarter, said TrendForce on June 1. Samsung's foundry sales fell 2 percent (by about 76.5 billion won) to US$4.18 billion.
TrendForce attributed the drop in Samsung Electronics’ market share to the shutdown of the company’s Austin plant in Texas for about a month due to a snow storm in February. Samsung Electronics announced at a first-quarter earnings conference call that its damage from the snowstorm amounted to about 300 billion won to 400 billion won. The Austin plant started operating normally in early April.
On the other hand, TSMC, the overwhelming No. 1 foundry player, made US$12.92 billion in sales in the first quarter, far surpassing Samsung Electronics. TSMC's sales increased by 2 percent (about 228.4 billion won) compared to the previous quarter and its market share increased by 1 percentage point from 54 percent to 55 percent. TSMC’s market share gap with Samsung Electronics widened to 38 percentage points. TrendForce explained that TSMC showed stable sales growth by taking orders for 7-nm products from AMD, MediaTek, and Qualcomm.
Samsung Electronics announced Vision 2030 to become the No. 1 system semiconductor maker by 2030, but has failed to narrow its gap with TSMC.
Although Samsung Electronics has decided to invest 171 trillion won in the foundry sector, 38 trillion won more than the originally planned 133 trillion won, with 19 trillion won to be invested in building a new foundry plant in the United States, TSMC's investment is much more aggressive than this. TSMC decided to build six new fabs in Arizona and establish a semiconductor research institute in cooperation with the Japanese government by investing 370 billion won. TSMC has been investing in facilities three times more than Samsung Electronics each year. TSMC has more than 50,000 employees in the foundry business while Samsung’s foundry division has less than 20,000 employees.
In addition, total sales of the world's top 10 foundry companies in the first quarter stood at US$22.75 billion, the highest ever, boosted by increased demand for non-memory semiconductors such as automotive chips. UMC of Taiwan ranked third with US$1.68 billion followed by GlobalFoundries of the United States with US$1.3 billion, and SMIC of China with US$1.1 billion.