TSMC gains foundry market share as Samsung, GloFo drop
Despite this, some disruptive events limited the market’s sequential growth in the 1Q21. The quarterly revenue of the top 10 foundries rose by 1 percent to a record high of US$22.75 billion in 1Q21.
TSMC maintained its top rank with a 2 percent sequential rise in revenue taking it to 55 percent marketshare. It’ s main drivers were its 16/12nm and 7nm nodes. The revenue from the 7nm production serves AMD, MediaTek, and Qualcomm, amongst others and increased 23 percent QonQ. The 5nm revenue dipped because Apple, the largest client for 5nm, entered an off-season for device production, TrendForce said.
Second-ranked foundry Samsung, posted 2 percent drop in revenue knocking its market share down to 17 percent. This was due to a freak winter storm in Texas in February that caused power outages in Austin and forced Samsung to close its wafer fab for a lengthy period. The S2 wafer fab was only able to return to normal operation in April (see Qualcomm, Tesla, Renesas hit by Samsung’s Texan winter).
The only other top ten foundry to see revenues decline was Globalfoundries. Its revenue dropped 16 percent sequentially to US$1.3 billion for 1Q2. This was due to the formal hand over of Fab3E in Singapore to Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp. (VIS) of Taiwan (see GloFo sells MEMS business, fab to Taiwan’s Vanguard).
Ranking of top ten foundries by revenue in 1Q21. Source: TrendForce.
UMC was fully loaded in 1Q21 thanks to the robust demand for PMICs, TDDI, OLED DDIs, CIS, and Wi-Fi SoCs. UMC raised prices, thereby causing its revenue to jump 5 percent QoQ to US$1.68 billion for 1Q21.
SMIC raised its revenue by 12 percent to US$1.1 billion for 1Q21. The growth was mainly attributed to increased shipments to Qualcomm and MPS. There was strong demand for PMICs made with the foundry’s 0.15/0.18 micron nodes and for RF chips, MCUs, and Wi-Fi chips made with the foundry’s 40nm node, TrendForce said.
TrendForce said it expects the quarterly total revenue of the top 10 foundries to increase QoQ in 2Q21 by between 1 and 3 percent.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
Qualcomm, Tesla, Renesas hit by Samsung’s Texan winter
Samsung’s snow-days will knock 5% off smartphone production
TSMC takes market from Samsung, GloFo, but Covid-19 impact to come
GloFo sells MEMS business, fab to Taiwan’s Vanguard
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