Text/Ball Review/Zhang Ziyang Correction/Zhiqiu
As the world's largest chip foundry company, TSMC has made many chip design companies compete to send orders with advanced technology and huge production capacity, such as Intel, Qualcomm, Apple, AMD and other giants are long-term cooperative customers of TSMC.
However, a strong user base has made TSMC face many problems, such as differential treatment between customers, so that some TSMC customers have been greatly dissatisfied.
TSMC "opens the back door" for Apple
On December 11, Fast Technology news, due to the special treatment given by TSMC to Apple, Qualcomm and AMD had great dissatisfaction.
According to the author's understanding, TSMC does have certain preferential treatment for Apple, such as TSMC's foundry price, Qualcomm, AMD, Intel and other customers' foundry prices have increased by 20%, while for Apple's customers, TSMC has only increased its price by less than 5%.
The author believes that there is nothing wrong with TSMC's practice of "opening the back door" for Apple. You know, Apple is TSMC's largest customer, such as the previous generations of Apple A series processors, M series processors are all foundry by TSMC, and TSMC, will also open an exclusive foundry replacement for Apple, focusing on serving the OEM of Apple processors.
Not only that, according to taiwan media DIGIMIES quoted industry insiders, Apple's iPhone, iPad and wearable device chip foundry orders accounted for more than 20% of TSMC's total foundry revenue.
It is not difficult to see from the above that Apple is also extremely important to TSMC, so it is reasonable for TSMC to give Apple preferential treatment in terms of FOUND price.
In the upcoming 3nm era, according to TSMC, the first batch of production capacity will be given priority to large customers, and there is no doubt that Apple will be the biggest beneficiary. To this end, Intel also paid a special visit to TSMC in order to obtain more 3nm production capacity from TSMC.
Of course, Qualcomm and AMD expressed dissatisfaction is also understandable, because, from the current chip market competition pattern, AMD and Intel; Qualcomm and MediaTek and Apple, the competition between them is not fierce.
If TSMC continues to "open the backdoor" for Apple, then this will seriously affect Qualcomm and AMD's shipments of chips, affect the popularity of its own products in the market, and the worst result is that Qualcomm and AMD's market share declines and revenue performance is not satisfactory.
Samsung "sits and reaps the benefits"
For TSMC, it has been actively expanding the production capacity of mature processes, and in terms of advanced processes, TSMC's production capacity is undoubtedly very limited, and it will face huge challenges in terms of capacity allocation.
According to media reports, AMD and Qualcomm have decided to hand over the 3nm order to Samsung OEM and become the first wave of customers of Samsung.
The reason for this decision, on the one hand, Qualcomm and AMD may not be able to get enough 3nm production capacity from TSMC's hands; on the other hand, Samsung's 3nm process technology seems to be more advanced than TSMC's, according to the author's understanding, Samsung 3nm uses GAA transistor technology, and TSMC still uses Fin transistor technology, in contrast, TSMC's technology is slightly backward.
AmD and Qualcomm's transfer orders are undoubtedly very good news for Samsung. It should be known that Samsung has always hoped to achieve TSMC surpassing in advanced technology, but due to customer and production capacity reasons, TSMC has always been firmly in the throne of the foundry market hegemony, for this reason, Samsung bet on 3nm process nodes.
If AMD and Qualcomm, the two chip giants, transfer orders to Samsung OEM, there is no doubt that Samsung's customer base will further grow, on the contrary, TSMC's strength will be weakened, after all, AMD and Qualcomm's proportion of TSMC's customer group is not low, so, to a certain extent, accelerate the pace of Samsung surpassing TSMC.
However, I think it is too early to talk about Samsung surpassing TSMC. Next, mainly look at Samsung and TSMC who will take the lead in mass production of 3nm chips.
If the mass production of Samsung's 3nm process is earlier than that of TSMC, then Qualcomm and AMD will most likely transfer orders.
However, Qualcomm and AMD also have to consider the problem of Samsung's 3nm production capacity while transferring orders, after all, compared with TSMC, Samsung's production capacity is indeed somewhat insufficient.
Write to the end
TSMC's differential treatment of customers has indeed created an opportunity for Samsung to surpass, and the focus is on how Samsung should grasp it. First of all, Samsung needs to speed up the mass production speed of the 3nm process and walk in front of TSMC; secondly, Samsung also needs to increase production capacity, if there is not enough production capacity, it is still difficult to attract customers to join.
At present, Qualcomm has initially recognized Samsung, such as Qualcomm's new generation of Snapdragon 8 Gen1 is founded by Samsung's 4nm process, and subsequently, Qualcomm may hand over more orders to Samsung, which is undoubtedly a good start for Samsung.
All in all, the author believes that Samsung still has a great chance of surpassing TSMC.