first listed the data. This is a graph of the revenue share of TSMC's major customers and contributions in the past three years.
As can be seen from the chart, Apple has always been TSMC's largest customer, contributing about a quarter of its revenue from 24% in 2019 to 25.4% in 2021.
, Huawei HiSilicon has changed the most, contributing 15% of its revenue in 2019, ranking second, but it continued to decline after that, and by 2021, it became 0%.
Why does Huawei HiSilicon contribute 0 revenue? The reason is that after September 15, 2020, TSMC no longer helped Huawei foundry chips, and Huawei HiSilicon Kirin chips have also become the masterpiece.
Then among TSMC's main customers, Apple is the dominant one. Others like Qualcomm , AMD , Nvidia, etc., all have a share of less than 10%, which is relatively scattered and no longer so concentrated.
What consequences does this cause? Of course, it was Keda who bullied the store, and TSMC was caught by Apple.
When TSMC raised prices for all customers in 2021, Apple made special decisions. For other customers, TSMC raised prices between 10% and 20%, but it "special care" for Apple, only 3% increase in price, because Apple is the only big customer.
. Recently, it has been reported that Apple plans to increase the price of wafer foundry in 2023, with a range of around 10-15%. However, Apple directly refused this time and did not give TSMC a room to increase its price, and was unwilling to accept it even specialization.
This makes TSMC difficult. If you don’t raise prices for Apple, but only raise prices for other customers, it will cause dissatisfaction with other customers. This is really unfair. If Qualcomm, AMD, and Nvidia all make trouble and even transfer orders in the end, TSMC will be afraid.
and Apple's price increase, but I was afraid that Apple would not accept it, so I would transfer the order to , Samsung . Once Apple transfers the order to Samsung, Samsung will accept it with a smile and will not be able to ask for it.
This is the disadvantage of having only one big customer. If Huawei HiSilicon had contributed 15% or even 20% of its revenue before, the situation would definitely not be like this. I guess Apple would not be so big.
Because even if Apple transfers orders and Huawei HiSilicon, TSMC will not have that much impact. At the same time, Apple and Huawei are also competing. Apple transfers to Samsung and Huawei benefits, and Apple doesn’t want to see it. If it restrains each other, everyone will not leave. If TSMC can hold on, it will not be the embarrassing situation in this current situation.
Will TSMC regret it? In fact, this is not a matter of regret or not. It is TSMC that has to do so. If TSMC wants to use American technology, it has to reject Huawei...
