TSMC announces record monthly sales

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufac-turing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world's largest made-to-order chipmaker, yesterday reported record monthly sales for last month.

Sales rose to NT$23.41 billion (US$691.9 million) in August, up 27.8 percent from the same period last year and around 1 percent from the previous month, the company said in a statement.

For the first eight months of the year, TSMC's revenue reached NT$168.94 billion (US$4.99 billion), an increase of 35 percent from a year ago, the company said.

TSMC's announcement of its August figure comes just two days after smaller rival United Micro-electronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) reported promising sales last month.

UMC on Tuesday said its August sales surged 64 percent year-on-year to a record monthly high of NT$11.51 billion (US$339.2 million).

Meanwhile, TSMC will make chips for Intel Corp that enable long-range wireless high-speed Internet surfing, the DigiTimes Web site reported.

Intel will introduce the so-called WiMAX chips within the next 12 months, Intel Executive Vice President Sean Maloney said at the International Telecommunication Union conference in Busan, South Korea, on Tuesday.

Intel, which gets more than 80 percent of its sales from computer chips, has been pushing into the market for semiconductors for cell-phones and communications gear to compete with rivals such as Texas Instruments Inc.