Samsung's Foundry Market Share Falls to 16.3% in 1Q22

The top 10 global foundry revenue ranking in the first quarter of 2022

Among the top 10 global foundry companies, Samsung Electronics was the only company to log a decrease in sales in the first quarter of this year. Its gap with TSMC widened even further as its market share fell by 2 percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2021.

Samsung Electronics’ foundry sales in the first quarter of this year stood at US$5,328 million (about 6.9 trillion won), down 3.9 percent from the fourth quarter of last year, said TrendForce, a market research firm, on June 20.

The Korean tech giant’s foundry share in the first quarter was 16.3 percent, down 2 percentage points from 18.3 percent in the previous quarter. On the other hand, TSMC, the No. 1 player in the world foundry industry, had a market share of 53.6 percent, an increase of 1.5 percentage points from 52.1 percent in the previous quarter. The market share gap between the two foundry heavyweights widened from 33.8 percentage points in the fourth quarter of 2021 to 37.3 percentage points.

A decrease in Samsung's foundry sales was blamed on weak demand for CMOS image sensors (CISs) and driver ICs in the system LSI sector due to a slump in the TV and smartphone markets, analysts say. In addition, the expansion of 4-nano semiconductor production and the rate of yield improvement were slower than expected.

On the other hand, TSMC's sales in the first quarter hit US$17,529 million (about 22.7 trillion won), an increase of 11.3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2021. This is attributed to a steady increase in demand for high-performance computing chips, an improved exchange rate and a wafer price hike. TSMC's quarterly sales growth by node was estimated to be an average of 10 percent. In particular, 6-nm/7-nm and 12-nm/16-nm processes recorded high growth rates thanks to the small-scale expansion of production facilities. But the company's 4-nm and 5-nm process sales dropped as the iPhone 13 entered off-season.

In the foundry market share standings, the two leaders were followed by UMC (6.9 percent), Global Foundry (5.9 percent), SMIC (5.6 percent), Huahong (3.2 percent), PSMC (2 percent), VIS (1.5 percent), Nexchip (1.4 percent) and Tower Semiconductor (1.3 percent).

Meanwhile, the top 10 foundry companies’ sales totaled US$31.957 billion (about 41.304.4 billion won) in the first quarter, an increase of 8.2 percent from the fourth quarter of 2021.

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