TSMC
As the current king of chip manufacturing, TSMC not only achieved revenue of US$56.82 billion, far exceeding the US$8.29 billion of its main competitor Samsung Electronics . What’s even more terrifying is that TSMC’s market share has reached an astonishing 59.5%, which means that TSMC’s market share alone is more than all the remaining competitors combined. At the same time, the concentration of the chip manufacturing industry has further increased, and the overall market share of the world's top ten chip foundry manufacturers has reached 97.5%, which means that the market share of the remaining companies is only 2.5%.
Global chip foundry manufacturer ranking
occupies more than half of the market share. TSMC's biggest magic weapon is its continuous breakthroughs in the field of advanced processes. Since 16nm, TSMC has actually begun to lead other competitors. The Apple A9 chip using TSMC's 16nm process is better than Samsung Electronics' 14nm process in terms of power consumption and performance, which has also led to the fact that since the A10 chip started, , Apple has abandoned Samsung Electronics and turned all chip orders to TSMC.
With the continuous development of the smartphone industry, the demand for advanced process chips has also promoted the rapid development of TSMC - TSMC invested huge funds to develop advanced processes, and the advanced processes developed were used by Apple, Huawei , Nvidia, AMD and other manufacturers and brought huge benefits to TSMC. TSMC then invested the profits into more advanced process research and development, and eventually formed a virtuous cycle. The more advanced the process of
chip manufacturing
, the more TSMC's manufacturing process will be adopted by more manufacturers; after the increase in the number of manufacturers, it will help TSMC master the advanced process process , thereby reducing costs and occupying a greater share. With the help of TSMC's advanced process, AMD even defeated his old rival Intel . The former's market value reached US$140.3 billion, surpassing the market value of Intel, the former dominant semiconductor industry, of 132.4 billion.
Foreign media reports TSMC will give up 3nm
If TSMC's R&D-profit-making cycle can continue to invest in R&D, then its leading position in the chip process industry will be difficult to shake, but with the release of a series of bans on chips by the US, TSMC has also lost Huawei, the second largest customer that once accounted for 14% of the market, second only to Apple. Now the consequences of losing Huawei are gradually fermenting. TSMC has invested heavily in research and development of the 3nm process N3, which has been abandoned by Apple and Intel, which has also led to a lack of user use in the 3nm process. Therefore, TSMC has had to give up the N3 process and continue to invest in research and development in the more advanced N3E (3nm improvement).
TSMC will continue to develop the N3E process
3nm is not good news for TSMC. First of all, the cycle of R&D-profit-continuing investment in R&D has been broken, and the lack of profit links has led to the restriction of TSMC's investment in the R&D field. Secondly, the abandonment of the 3nm node has also brought competitors such as Samsung Electronics closer to the gap with TSMC. An important reason why TSMC's 3nm was abandoned by Apple and other companies is that its performance improvement is limited but its cost increases greatly, and its cost performance is too low, which has led to no one's attention.
TSMC's technology roadmap
Finally, it exposed a hidden danger of TSMC, that is, advanced processes such as 3nm are currently only a few customers such as Apple and Intel. Most fields currently do not use costly advanced processes, especially after losing the important customer of Huawei Kirin chip , there are only a few customers of TSMC's advanced processes, which also leads to TSMC's loss of bargaining power and no one uses the processes that have invested huge amounts of money to develop.
TSMC Chairman Liu Deyin
Previously, TSMC Chairman Liu Deyin once said arrogantly, "No one can control TSMC." "TSMC is able to maintain its technological leadership because it has many equipment factories. TSMC is a trinity business model, and technological leadership is the first goal." "If it is forcibly seized, TSMC will also be completely shut down. TSMC's materials and other supply chains come from the United States, Japan and other countries, and it is useless to have chip factory buildings and equipment alone."
But the dilemma of 3nm unused now should also let Liu Deyin see the reality clearly. TSMC is indeed ahead in the technology field, but to maintain this leadership, it also requires a huge market to support it. Just like this 3nm technology returned in vain, if the next N3E is still unused, then it is not only TSMC's huge R&D investment has been wasted, but also means that the gap between competitors and TSMC will be further narrowed.
Huawei
After losing important customers like Huawei, TSMC has finally swallowed the bitter fruit of having technology but no one uses it. In fact, TSMC and Liu Deyin should also reconsider their strategies and positioning, after all, you must know whether it is the current chip The domestic smartphone market with big users or the new energy vehicle market in the future is undoubtedly one of the largest markets. In 2021, domestic smartphone shipments reached 329 million units, more than twice the US smartphone shipments of 147 million units during the same period; in 2021, domestic automobile sales ranked first in the global automobile market with a share of 31.78%, and the second-ranked United States (18.64%) and third-ranked Japan (5.38%) are not as much as us.
Such a huge market also gives us the confidence to develop the chip industry. If domestic chips eventually surpass TSMC on the technical level, then Liu Deyin may regret the decision he made in the past. And after losing his technological advantages, what is left of TSMC?
