Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, expects to ship 1.5 million 28-nanometer (nm) wafers by the end of this year, riding on strong demand for mobile devices, a company executive said yesterday.
TSMC has cornered more than 90 percent of the worldwide advanced 28nm-chip market. In April, the company said that revenue generated from its 28nm chips for this year would be triple that of last year, driven by strong demand for smartphones and tablets.
Speaking at a Computex summit forum, Been-Jon Woo (金平中), director of TSMC’s business development unit, said the company had created a “unique” business model, dubbed “Grand Alliance,” to grow along with its customers, and the success of this strategy is evidenced by its robust 28nm chip business.
TSMC’s 28nm chip customers include US mobile phone chip designer Qualcomm Inc and Taiwan’s MediaTek Inc (聯發科). The company’s equipment for such advanced chips is likely to continue to be fully utilized as was the case last year, the company said earlier.
“This year, TSMC is forecast to ship 1.5 million 12-inch wafers on advanced 28nm process technology,” Woo said.
“Twenty-eight-nanometer [chips] will contribute greatly to the company’s revenue,” she said, adding that “mobile [device demand] is the driver.”
TSMC chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) yesterday also voiced optimism for growth in cloud-based mobile products, as cloud technology has become one of the key areas of development for the mobile industry and has helped TSMC grow rapidly over recent years.
The company expects 28nm chips to make up at least 30 percent of its total revenue this year. Last quarter, TSMC made 24 percent of its NT$132.76 billion (US$4.44 billion) revenue from selling 28nm chips.
That gives the firm a significant edge, as local rival United Microelectronics Corp (聯電) said last month that it would not see a meaningful revenue contribution from 28nm chips before the end of the year.
Responding to questions on how to cope with growing competition from South Korean firms, Samsung Electronics Co in particular, Woo said TSMC is different from its competitors in that the company does not compete with its customers but concentrates on providing them with the most cost-effective products.
Separately, PC vendor Asustek Computer Inc (華碩) chief executive officer Jerry Shen (沈振來) yesterday said on the sidelines of the forum that the company plans to launch new tablets this fall, using Quaclomm’s latest processors for tablets, supporting 4G long-term evolution technology.
Shen also showcased the company’s new “Padfone Infinity,” equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 600 processor. The product is the third-generation of “phablet” devices developed by Asustek, which combine the function of a mobile phone with those of a tablet.
The forum was attended by a number of other technology heavyweights, including Steve Mollenkopf, president and chief operating officer of Qualcomm, and Ian Drew, chief marketing officer and executive vice president of business development at UK chip designer ARM Holdings PLC.
Additional reporting by CNA
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
The US government on Wednesday sanctioned more than two dozen companies in China, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, including offshoots of a US chip firm, accusing the businesses of providing illicit support to Iran’s military or proxies. The US Department of Commerce included two subsidiaries of US-based chip distributor Arrow Electronics Inc (艾睿電子) on its so-called entity list published on the federal register for facilitating purchases by Iran’s proxies of US tech. Arrow spokesman John Hourigan said that the subsidiaries have been operating in full compliance with US export control regulations and his company is discussing with the US Bureau of
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
RSS