HardwareTimes - TSMC’s Revenue Nearly 4x More than Samsung Foundry, SMIC Nearly on Par w/ GloFlo
“Over the last 5-6 years TSMC has become the leading chip foundry in the world…by a large margin. The Taiwanese foundry presently controls over 50% of the pure-play foundry market. In terms of revenue, it pulls in more than all the other foundries combined. The second-largest pure-play foundry, Samsung reported revenue of $4,810 million for the third quarter of 2021. Meanwhile, TSMC earned nearly four times as much, pulling in a revenue of $14,884 million in the same quarter.
The pure-play foundry industry has been largely static over the last year. All major foundries including TSMC, Samsung, and UMC recorded marginal gains, with Global Foundries and SMIC seeing no and negative growth, respectively. Another point worth noting is that China’s largest foundry (SMIC) has been consistently holding onto the position of the fifth largest PP foundry. It’s just inches behind GlobalFoundries with a market share of 5% (vs 6.1% for GF). In comparison, the fourth largest foundry UMC accounts for 7.3% of the market, Samsung for 17.1%, and TSMC for 53.1%.”
My thoughts: The major reason the fab industry remains static is because they are operating at 100%. Over the coming years as more fabs are online, revenue will correspondingly increase.
One thing to consider is TSMC’s dominance of the market and what that might mean in the future to geopolitical situations.