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Nowadays, looking at the global chip foundry market, the strongest are Samsung and TSMC, and at the same time, the competition between them is becoming more and more fierce.
However, Samsung's strength in OEM is still slightly inferior to TSMC, although it often shouts out the slogan of surpassing TSMC, from the results, Samsung has ended in failure and has been labeled as the "strongest king".
TSMC will make another round
Entering 2022, TSMC and Samsung's first "confrontation" in the OEM market, TSMC once again won the victory. On February 23, C114 communication network news, Qualcomm exclusively handed over the 3nm AP foundry order to TSMC.
Not only that, some insiders said that Qualcomm also handed over part of the OEM orders for some of the 4nm Snapdragon 8 flagship processors to TSMC.
You know, since 2020, qualcomm's Snapdragon flagship chip oem is completed exclusively by Samsung, which is undoubtedly a big step forward in surpassing TSMC for Samsung.
Today, Qualcomm has abandoned Samsung, which undoubtedly announces TSMC's victory again.
It is worth mentioning that TSMC not only regained Qualcomm's chip foundry orders, but also obtained Apple's chip orders.
On February 23, TechWeb news, Apple has handed over all the orders for the 5G modems required for the iPhone 14 series to TSMC.
In the author's opinion, it is also reasonable for Apple to hand over the 5G modem to TSMC, because, to some extent, TSMC has long become Apple's royal oem, and all chip products will be given to TSMC to OEM.
From the above point of view, TSMC's orders from Apple and Qualcomm can be described as "five full and six full", and such a result will undoubtedly have a big impact on TSMC.
On the one hand, after TSMC won the favor of Apple and Qualcomm, in the chip foundry market in 2022, it will undoubtedly gain more market share, and at the same time, it can also make its own revenue hit a new high again.
On the other hand, Qualcomm broke away from Samsung to join TSMC, which also proved to the outside world that TSMC's foundry strength is stronger, further enhancing TSMC's influence in the foundry market.
In this way, TSMC will be of great help in developing the global foundry market.
In short, Apple and Qualcomm transferred chip orders to TSMC, and for TSMC, the impact is naturally positive.
Samsung overtaking is basically no play
But for Samsung, its desire to surpass TSMC is basically no play. Why?
First of all, we must understand why Qualcomm will leave Samsung, mainly because the chip yield of Samsung OEM is relatively low, which also leads to its FOUNDC graphics card, Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 series processor and its own Orion 2200 chip, whether in terms of performance or energy efficiency.
According to the news reported by DigiTimes, some employees of Samsung Electronics forged and falsely reported the yield rate of 5nm, 4nm and 3nm processes, but in fact, the yield rate of these advanced processes of Samsung was only 35%.
In other words, Samsung Electronics was tragically pit by its own employees, resulting in various problems in chip products manufactured for Qualcomm.
There is no doubt that the follow-up Samsung will further improve the advanced process, which will take a lot of time to complete. In contrast, TSMC's already mass-produced 5nm and 4nm are much better than Samsung's, and TSMC is constantly improving the technology of these two processes.
Therefore, in terms of advanced technology, it will be very difficult for Samsung to surpass TSMC.
In addition, Samsung wants to regain the recognition of customers, it is estimated that the difficulty is not small, on the one hand, Samsung's chip foundry reputation is lost, and the entire industry knows that its chip foundry yield rate is low;
On the other hand, TSMC is making every effort to increase the production capacity of chips and further hold customers firmly in their hands, and it is difficult for Samsung to take food from TSMC.
Does Samsung really not have a chance to surpass TSMC?
In the author's opinion, Samsung is not without opportunities, and now the reason for the low yield rate of Samsung foundry chips has been found, with Samsung's technical accumulation in the field of chip foundry, the problem of low yield rate will certainly be able to make up for it.
In addition, there is news in the industry that there are also problems with the yield rate of TSMC's 3nm process, and it has to modify the roadmap many times, and the mass production time of TSMC's 3nm process has been postponed.
If Samsung can seize this gap and take the lead in achieving mass production in 3nm and the yield rate is qualified, it will be an opportunity for Samsung to surpass.
But in general, Samsung wants to surpass TSMC, there are still many difficulties to face.
Write to the end
For Samsung at this stage, TSMC is still the existence of a giant, whether it is technology or customer groups, Samsung can not match.
However, at a time when the global chip market is surging up, Samsung may not be able to break the pattern of TSMC's dominance. In the end, Samsung and TSMC who are the winners, we will wait and see.