Source: Reuters
According to the statistics of DIGIMISMS Research, the global foundry market in 2021, TSMC's market share is 59.5%, and it almost completely dominates the 7/5nm market segment. Samsung ranked second, with non-storage revenue accounting for about one-third of TSMC's total revenue, while foundry business accounted for only 14.5% of TSMC's total revenue.
The report shows that the global top 10 foundry rankings from high to low are: TSMC, Samsung, UMC, GF, SMIC, Huahong, LCC, Tower, world advanced and Eastern Hi-Tech, in addition to Tower and the world's advanced ranking exchange, the rest of the manufacturers rank the same as in 2020, ranking in the top 5 market share accounted for nearly 90%.
DIGITIMES Research pointed out that Samsung may want to surpass TSMC, but its non-storage business unit cannot afford huge capital expenditures or research and development expenses, and TSMC's capital expenditure is expected to exceed $40 billion in 2022. Therefore, Samsung will not spin off the wafer foundry business. To some extent, Samsung may beat TSMC in terms of node upgrades, or win one or two customers, but overall, it can hardly pose a major threat to TSMC's global leadership.
Judging from this, Samsung's most likely mode of operation is vertical or/and horizontal integration with strategic partners. Samsung may partner with UMC or even pay in advance to ensure production capacity. Samsung not only focuses on CIS-related contract business, but has also entered the top 5 customers of UMC and is expected to enter the top 3. The collaboration between Samsung and UMC in the 28nm field allows Samsung to focus on developing advanced processes.
UMC also has ecosystem support similar to TSMC's in Taiwan. The government's incentives do not favor TSMC. If UMC comes up with some strategies, such as poaching young talents from TSMC, it may pose a new threat to TSMC.
In addition, although there are rumors that TSMC is tailoring the 3nm process for Intel, Intel and UMC may still cooperate. Since UMC has announced that it will no longer develop more advanced processes under 7nm, it will not pose a threat to Intel or Samsung in terms of technology development, but will create opportunities for cooperation in business deployment.
The report further notes that players ranked after UMC are largely no threat to the leader. In the context of geopolitical tensions, second-tier foundries are not eligible to participate in the global competition of top foundries. The industrial order and division of labor model of the wafer foundry industry will remain quite stable from 2022 to 2025.
(Proofreading/Ukyan)