TSMC loses market share in top ten foundry ranking
With TSMC expected to see its foundry revenue fall by 17.8 percent year-on-year, this means the market leader is losing market share in 1Q19. The top three foundries are TSMC, Samsung and Globalfoundries. TSMC’s share fell to 48.1 percent. In the 1H18 TSMC’s foundry market share was 56.1 percent.
Meanwhile Samsung went from 7.4 percent market share in 1H18 to 19.1 percent in 1Q19 leapfrogging Globalfoundries and UMC. Samsung aims to secure a 25 percent market share by 2023.
TSMC’s fall is partly attributable to the scrapping of wafers made with defective photoresist chemical in the first quarter (see TSMC hit for $550 million by sub-standard photoresist). It is also being negatively affected by lower-than-expected demand among smartphone customers and the decline of cryptocurrency ASIC demand.
While the larger foundries that rely on their 300mm wafer fabs for volume production showed double-digit declines year-on-year those companies that offer processes on 200mm-diameter wafers – Tower Semiconductor, Hua Hong, Vanguard and DongBu HiTek performed better.
Global foundry production will be worth approximately $70 billion in 2019.
TrendForce said that if the politico-economic situation doesn’t see significant improvement in 1H19 the firm remains cautious about foundry business in 2019 and doesn’t rule out the possibility of a market contraction.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
TSMC hit for $550 million by sub-standard photoresist
Comment: GloFo gets warm words, but for how long?
Foundry sales fall faster in February
TSMC forecasts feeble first quarter
