A key reason for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) success is that the company has never competed with clients, company president and co-CEO CC Wei
June 2, 2014 Leave a comment
TSMC never competes with clients, says co-CEO
Josephine Lien, Taipei; Adam Hwang, DIGITIMES [Thursday 29 May 2014]
A key reason for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s (TSMC) success is that the company has never competed with clients, company president and co-CEO CC Wei said at the TSMC 2014 Technology Symposium in Taiwan on May 29.
TSMC’s main competitors have not only cooperated with but also competed with clients, but this is an infeasible business model, Wei said. The competitors referred to are Samsung Electronics and Intel, market analysts said.
According to TSMC estimates, 1.25 billion smartphones and 300 million tablets will be shipped globally in 2014, of which 480 million and 120 million units, respectively, will be shipped from China.
TSMC turned out 16 million 8-inch-equivalent wafers based on over 200 manufacturing processes for more than 440 clients in 2013, with chips used in about 8,600 products. In 2013, TSMC reached a global market share of 55% for baseband ICs, 73% for RF ICs, 80% for APUs, 90% hard disk drive ICs and about 100% for GPUs.
TSMC expects 28nm technology to account for over 30% of 2014 consolidated revenues. HKMG process accounts for 85% of 28nm-based output and 60 clients have adopted 28nm HKMG. 28nm production is undertaken at TSMC’s Fab 15 factory, and monthly production capacity increased from 50,000 wafers in 2012 to 100,000 units in August 2013.
TSMC started 20nm volume production at Fabs 12 and 14 in the second quarter of 2014 and has had 20 tape-out clients. In addition, TSMC has 16 tape-out clients for 16nm FinFET Plus.