The production value of Taiwan’s wafer foundry industry is expected to grow 8 to 10 percent year-on-year next year due to efforts by manufacturers to develop high-end technology, the Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute (MIC, 產業情報研究所) said.
Next year’s expected growth rate would beat this year’s estimated rate of 6.4 percent, the institute said, adding that next year’s production value is forecast to total almost NT$1.2 trillion (US$39.05 billion).
Taiwan’s wafer foundry industry is leading its peers in the global market in the development of advanced 7-nanometer processors, which is expected to boost its share of orders for application processors to be used in high-end smartphones, sophisticated graphics processors and chips used for artificial intelligence, it said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, has begun producing chips using the 7-nanometer process.
TSMC’s rival California-based Globalfoundries Inc earlier last week announced that it has dropped 7-nanometer processor development, a move that analysts said would help TSMC reinforce its lead in the world market.
TSMC accounts for more than 50 percent of the global wafer foundry business.
Production at TSMC’s wafer plant in Nanjing is expanding and United Microelectronics Corp (聯電), a smaller Taiwanese rival of TSMC, is eager to extend into automotive electronics applications, the institute said, adding that the moves would give the nation’s wafer foundry industry an overall boost next year.
The production value of the nation’s IC design industry is expected to total NT$579.8 billion this year, up 6.2 percent from a year earlier, thanks to rising demand for wireless communications devices and driver ICs for flat-panel use, it said.
The output of the IC packaging and testing industry is expected to total NT$474.9 billion this year, up 8.3 percent from a year earlier, it said, adding that the industry should grow about 7 percent next year.
IC packaging and testing businesses are expected to continue to benefit this year from the rapid development of high-performance computing devices, seeing stronger demand for high-end processes and weaker demand for handheld devices, which could cap output growth in the industry, it added.
ASE Industrial Holding Co (日月光投資控股), the world’s largest IC packaging and testing services provider, is expected to post third-quarter sales of NT$101.5 billion, up 19 to 20 percent from a year earlier, thanks to peak season effects, analysts said.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
AI TALENT: No financial details were released about the deal, in which top Groq executives, including its CEO, would join Nvidia to help advance the technology Nvidia Corp has agreed to a licensing deal with artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Groq, furthering its investments in companies connected to the AI boom and gaining the right to add a new type of technology to its products. The world’s largest publicly traded company has paid for the right to use Groq’s technology and is to integrate its chip design into future products. Some of the start-up’s executives are leaving to join Nvidia to help with that effort, the companies said. Groq would continue as an independent company with a new chief executive, it said on Wednesday in a post on its Web
RESPONSE: The Japanese Ministry of Finance might have to intervene in the currency markets should the yen keep weakening toward the 160 level against the US dollar Japan’s chief currency official yesterday sent a warning on recent foreign exchange moves, after the yen weakened against the US dollar following Friday last week’s Bank of Japan (BOJ) decision. “We’re seeing one-directional, sudden moves especially after last week’s monetary policy meeting, so I’m deeply concerned,” Japanese Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Atsushi Mimura told reporters. “We’d like to take appropriate responses against excessive moves.” The central bank on Friday raised its benchmark interest rate to the highest in 30 years, but Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda chose to keep his options open rather than bolster the yen,
Even as the US is embarked on a bitter rivalry with China over the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI), Chinese technology is quietly making inroads into the US market. Despite considerable geopolitical tensions, Chinese open-source AI models are winning over a growing number of programmers and companies in the US. These are different from the closed generative AI models that have become household names — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI or Google’s Gemini — whose inner workings are fiercely protected. In contrast, “open” models offered by many Chinese rivals, from Alibaba (阿里巴巴) to DeepSeek (深度求索), allow programmers to customize parts of the software to suit their
RSS