Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is to fall one place to become the world’s fourth-biggest chipmaker this year due to slower revenue growth, IC Insights said yesterday.
The world’s top 15 semiconductor companies are to grow their revenues by an average of 18 percent to US$381.16 billion this year, outpacing the world semiconductor industry’s annual growth of 16 percent, the research firm said.
Samsung Electronics Co is to defend its top ranking, with total revenue forecast to grow 26 percent from last year to US$83.26 billion, IC Insights said. It attributed Samsung’s expansion to strong memorychip sales growth.
Samsung is expected to see its memorychip revenue grow 31 percent year-on-year to US$70 billion, it said, adding that memory chips are to account for 84 percent of its total sales, up from 81 percent last year.
However, its non-memory revenue is expected to grow a mere 6 percent to US$13.3 billion from US$12.5 billion last year, IC Insights added.
Intel, ranked No. 2, is expected to grow revenue by 14 percent year-on-year to US$70.15 billion, it said.
Intel lost its top ranking to Samsung in the second quarter of last year.
TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, lost its third-place ranking to South Korean memorychip supplier SK Hynix Inc, which ranked fourth last year.
TSMC is to see its revenue rise 6 percent year-on-year to US$34.2 billion, while SK Hynix’s revenue is to grow 41 percent year-on-year to US$37.73 billion, IC Insights said.
If TSMC were excluded from the top 15, Taiwanese handset chip designer MediaTek Inc (聯發科) would have ranked 15th with revenue totaling US$7.9 billion this year, up only 1 percent from last year, it said.
Taichung reported the steepest fall in completed home prices among the six special municipalities in the first quarter of this year, data compiled by Taiwan Realty Co (台灣房屋) showed yesterday. From January through last month, the average transaction price for completed homes in Taichung fell 8 percent from a year earlier to NT$299,000 (US$9,483) per ping (3.3m²), said Taiwan Realty, which compiled the data based on the government’s price registration platform. The decline could be attributed to many home buyers choosing relatively affordable used homes to live in themselves, instead of newly built homes in the city’s prime property market, Taiwan Realty
The government yesterday approved applications by Alphabet Inc’s Google to invest NT$27.08 billion (US$859.98 million) in Taiwan, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said in a statement. The Department of Investment Review approved two investments proposed by Google, with much of the funds to be used for data processing and electronic information supply services, as well as inventory procurement businesses in the semiconductor field, the ministry said. It marks the second consecutive year that Google has applied to increase its investment in Taiwan. Google plans to infuse NT$25.34 billion into Charter Investments Ltd (特許投資顧問) through its Singapore-based subsidiary Fructan Holdings Singapore Pte Ltd, and
Micron Technology Inc is a driving force pushing the US Congress to pass legislation that would put new export restrictions on equipment its Chinese competitors use to make their chips, according to people familiar with the matter. A US House of Representatives panel yesterday was to vote on the “MATCH Act,” a bill designed to close gaps in restrictions on chipmaking equipment. It would also pressure foreign companies that sell equipment to Chinese chipmaking facilities to align with export curbs on US companies like Lam Research Corp and Applied Materials Inc. The bill targets facilities operated by China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies Inc
Singapore-based ride-hailing and delivery giant Grab Holdings’ planned acquisition of Foodpanda’s Taiwan operations has yet to enter the formal review stage, as regulators await supplementary documents, the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said yesterday. Acting FTC Chairman Chen Chih-min (陳志民) told the legislature’s Economics Committee that although Grab submitted its application on March 27, the case has not been officially accepted because required materials remain incomplete. Once the filing is finalized, the FTC would launch a formal probe into the deal, focusing on issues such as cross-shareholding and potential restrictions on market competition, Chen told lawmakers. Grab last month announced that it would acquire