Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which supplies chips for Apple Inc’s iPhone 6S series, yesterday said it has signed a US$3 billion investment agreement with the government of Nanjing city in China to produce 16-nanometer chips in the world’s largest semiconductor market.
It is the single largest China-bound investment by a Taiwanese company.
The chipmaker plans to establish a wholly owned subsidiary in China, TSMC (Nanjing) Co Ltd (台積電 (南京)), to manage the company’s first 12-inch wafer fabrication in China and a design service center there.
“With our 12-inch fabrication and design service center in Nanjing, TSMC aims to provide closer support to customers as well as expand its business opportunities in China in step with the rapid growth of the Chinese semiconductor market over the past several years,” TSMC chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) said in a company statement.
“We look forward to stronger collaboration with our customers to further expand our market share,” Chang said.
In January, Chang said that manufacturing costs in China were still higher than in Taiwan in response to an investor’s question.
“The scale is smaller, so the cost is higher. We hope to make up for that by expanding our market share,” Chang said at the time.
TSMC holds the largest foundry market segment share in China with more than 100 Chinese customers, including Hisilicon Technologies Co (海思半導體), a handset chip designer owned by Huawei Technologies Co (華為).
Revenue from Chinese clients made up 8 percent of TSMC’s overall revenue of NT$843.5 billion (US$25.8 billion) last year, according to TSMC’s financial report.
TSMC’s new 12-inch plant, located in Nanjing’s Pukou Economic Development Zone would have a planned capacity of 20,000 12-inch wafers per month, the chipmaker said.
The facilities are scheduled to start production of 16-nanometer chips in the second half of 2018.
The chipmaker has began volume production of 16-nanometer process technology for customers in the third quarter of last year in its Tainan plant, which accounted for more than 50 percent of the international foundry market for 14-nanometer and 16-nanometer wafers that year.
The company’s market share in the segment is expected to increase by 20 percentage points to more than 70 percent this year, TSMC told investors in January.
The company forecast that its share in the international 14-nanometer and 16-nanometer chip market would increase this year.
The 16-nanometer chips would account for more than 20 percent of the company’s total revenues this year, it said.
TSMC’s 12-inch wafer factory would be the third such facility by Taiwanese chipmakers in China after United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電) and Powerchip Technology Corp (力晶科技) broke ground for their first 12-inch wafer factories in China early last year.
TSMC shares increased 0.63 percent to NT$159 yesterday, outperforming the TAIEX, which lost 0.17 percent.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the