Recent news said that with TSMC's insistence, Apple finally agreed to raise prices, which means that the game between TSMC and US chips ended with TSMC's victory. This move also means that TSMC no longer blindly compromises with US chips, but hopes to continue to insist on taking the initiative.
Recently, TSMC demanded to increase chip foundry prices on the grounds that costs such as labor and materials have increased. US chips emphasized that they contributed the most revenue to TSMC - US chips contributed nearly 70% of TSMC's revenue, and coupled with global chip overcapacity, it is not easy to raise prices, and in turn asked TSMC to lower prices.
In the game between the two sides, TSMC was in a dilemma. However, in the end, in order to ensure the launch of iPad, Mac, iPhone and other products in 2023, Apple took the lead in agreeing to TSMC's price increase requirement. After all, another chip foundry company, , Samsung, produced high-end chips for Qualcomm , had heat problems for two consecutive generations, proving that TSMC's advanced technology is more reliable. Apple had no choice but to accept TSMC's price increase requirement.
Apple is TSMC's largest chip customer, contributing 26% of TSMC's revenue, accounting for nearly 40% of the revenue contributed by US chips to TSMC. With Apple's compromise, it is estimated that other US chips will eventually choose to compromise. After all, they do not have many choices and can only rely on TSMC in terms of advanced process processes.
TSMC's attitude is so tough this time because it has not received enough rewards in its previous series of compromises to the United States. It realizes that blindly compromising to the United States will only lead to it losing the initiative. Therefore, it is abnormal and shows a tough attitude towards American chips, forcing American chips to make concessions.
Since 2020, the United States has successively asked TSMC and Samsung to submit confidential data and set up factories in the United States. They have done all of them, but the return from the United States is Intel, which has accelerated the research and development of advanced processes. Most of the US$52 billion subsidies promised by the United States were eventually given to American chip companies Intel, etc., and the subsidies received by TSMC and Samsung are quite limited.
Then the United States included many Asian chip companies, including TSMC, on the list of 's "Risk Risks of Guoan" with the intention to further suppress TSMC, which made TSMC fully realize the consequences of blind compromise, which would only trigger more serious suppression from the United States. As a result, TSMC began to gradually change its attitude.
TSMC quickly built advanced process factories in Japan, and said it would go to India, Europe and other places to set up factories in order to express its attitude of not relying on the United States. In the first quarter of this year, TSMC even released more chip production capacity to mainland Chinese chip companies, and the revenue contributed by mainland Chinese chip companies to TSMC also soared to 11%, an increase of more than 80% from 6% in 2021.
Now, TSMC and US chips are firm in terms of price increase, and even said that they would rather reduce production capacity than stop price increase. Then, the United States has restricted the export of high-end GPU chips to China in the near future. In order to ship more GPU chips to China as much as possible to mainland China before the deadline, NVIDIA requires TSMC to complete the production of GPU chips that were only completed in the past five months within 2 months. US chips finally realized that they cannot be without TSMC, so Apple took the lead in agreeing to increase prices.
Perhaps after this game, TSMC will finally understand that relying too much on American chips and even pleasing American chips will be detrimental to TSMC's long-term development. In the future, TSMC should increase orders for non-US chips to avoid continuing to be subject to American chips. Mainland China, the largest chip market, is something that TSMC should pay attention to. After all, cross-strait cooperation can bring the greatest benefits to Taiwanese companies.
