"The utilization rate is still higher than 100 percent," said Tzeng Jing-hao (曾晉皓), manager of the public relations department at TSMC.
Analysts aren't surprised, and don't expect the rate to tumble quickly.
But unused capacity is likely to appear as foundry capacity at TSMC increases and as demand for PCs and other information products traditionally falls in the first quarter of each year.
"The growth rate of demand will be unable to meet the speed of expansion," said Ken Chang, an analyst at China Securities Co. "It doesn't mean too much that sales in November reached a new high, because everyone's more worried about the situation next year."
RSS