Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s top contract chipmaker, yesterday said it planned to raise its spending on research and development by nearly 39 percent to NT$50 billion (US$1.63 billion) next year, as part of efforts to fend off growing competition from its peers.
This year, TSMC budgeted NT$36 billion for research and development spending, company chairman and chief executive Morris Chang (張忠謀) said in his speech at an event arranged by local think tank the Chung-hua Institute for Economic Research (中華經濟研究院).
“In the last five years, TSMC has seen a threat from overseas [companies],” said Chang, who founded TSMC in 1987. “TSMC has grown to be a company that is 10-fold, or even 20-fold bigger than the one I imagined back in 1985.”
“We think technology is the most important [factor behind this success],” Chang added.
Earlier this year, Chang said it was the firm’s mission to become a major chip technology and capacity provider to the global chip industry in the years to come.
TSMC is one of the world’s top three semiconductor companies in terms of technological capability, along with US chip giant Intel Corp and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, Chang said.
Presently, TSMC is not in direct competition with Intel and Samsung, Chang said.
“Intel is the semiconductor industry’s Mercedes-Benz, while TSMC is a Toyota,” Chang said, using the automobile industry as a metaphor.
However, in the next 20 years, “we will be rivals,” Chang said, adding that the growing popularity of affordable netbooks and smartphones is a trend that favored TSMC.
Intel and Samsung are makers of logic chips and memory chips, but in recent years they have expanded into the field of contract chip manufacturing, which is TSMC’s main market.
Commenting on the upward trend of the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, Chang said “for TSMC, it is an issue.”
TSMC’s gross margin would fall to between 48 percent and 50 percent this quarter, from 50 percent in the third quarter, if the NT dollar rose to NT$30.6 against the US dollar, the chipmaker said in October.
Chang expects a gradual appreciation of the local currency against the greenback, judging from the central bank’s recent intervention in the currency market, he said.
Nissan Motor Co has agreed to sell its global headquarters in Yokohama for ￥97 billion (US$630 million) to a group sponsored by Taiwanese autoparts maker Minth Group (敏實集團), as the struggling automaker seeks to shore up its financial position. The acquisition is led by a special purchase company managed by KJR Management Ltd, a Japanese real-estate unit of private equity giant KKR & Co, people familiar with the matter said. KJR said it would act as asset manager together with Mizuho Real Estate Management Co. Nissan is undergoing a broad cost-cutting campaign by eliminating jobs and shuttering plants as it grapples
TEMPORARY TRUCE: China has made concessions to ease rare earth trade controls, among others, while Washington holds fire on a 100% tariff on all Chinese goods China is effectively suspending implementation of additional export controls on rare earth metals and terminating investigations targeting US companies in the semiconductor supply chain, the White House announced. The White House on Saturday issued a fact sheet outlining some details of the trade pact agreed to earlier in the week by US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) that aimed to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies. Under the deal, China is to issue general licenses valid for exports of rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite “for the benefit of US end users and their suppliers
Dutch chipmaker Nexperia BV’s China unit yesterday said that it had established sufficient inventories of finished goods and works-in-progress, and that its supply chain remained secure and stable after its parent halted wafer supplies. The Dutch company suspended supplies of wafers to its Chinese assembly plant a week ago, calling it “a direct consequence of the local management’s recent failure to comply with the agreed contractual payment terms,” Reuters reported on Friday last week. Its China unit called Nexperia’s suspension “unilateral” and “extremely irresponsible,” adding that the Dutch parent’s claim about contractual payment was “misleading and highly deceptive,” according to a statement
The Chinese government has issued guidance requiring new data center projects that have received any state funds to only use domestically made artificial intelligence (AI) chips, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. In recent weeks, Chinese regulatory authorities have ordered such data centers that are less than 30 percent complete to remove all installed foreign chips, or cancel plans to purchase them, while projects in a more advanced stage would be decided on a case-by-case basis, the sources said. The move could represent one of China’s most aggressive steps yet to eliminate foreign technology from its critical infrastructure amid a
RSS