Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, is expected to secure more than half the orders for Apple Inc’s new mobile chip next year thanks to better production capacity planning.
“The Taiwanese manufacturer has a clearer road map for capacity planning next year, so we expect it to gain a higher market share next year,” an analyst at a European brokerage house told the Central News Agency in a recent interview, referring to more than 50 percent of the orders for Apple’s A10 chips next year.
However, orders for Apple’s A9 chips for the next iPhone in the fourth quarter of this year should be “shared equally” by TSMC and South Korean rival Samsung Electronics Co, said the analyst, who asked not to be named.
The analyst forecast that Apple’s A9 chip orders would account for more than 20 percent of TSMC’s overall revenue this year, which should offset the company’s declining revenue from making the A8 chip for the current iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus models.
In other words, TSMC could still boost its annual revenue by a “double digit” percentage this year, despite stronger competition from Samsung, the analyst said.
TSMC has forecast a 7 to 8 percent fall in second-quarter sales, citing inventory adjustments in the IC industry in the slow season.
At a technology symposium on May 28, TSMC’s operations and product development vice president Chin Yung-pei (秦永沛) said the company would continue to develop advanced 16-nanometer and 20-nanometer processes to lift overall production capacity.
Chin also said that the capacity of these processes is expected to double this year from last year and rise an additional 50 percent next year.
In related news, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), a major supplier of Apple products, was ranked as the world’s second-largest assembler of smartphones in the first quarter of the year, according to a report by technology research company International Data Corp (IDC).
Hon Hai trailed only behind Samsung in the top 10 rankings for global smartphone original design manufacturers (ODMs), IDC said in a report released on Wednesday last week.
Pegatron Corp (和碩) came third in terms of global smartphone ODM shipments in the first quarter, followed by LG Electronics Inc, Huaqin Technology Co (華勤), Oppo Electronics Corp (歐珀), Coolpad Group Ltd (酷派), Flextronics International Ltd, Inventec Appliances Corp (英華達) and Wingtech Group Ltd (聞泰), IDC said, without revealing the market shares of the individual companies.
According to an IDC forecast, global smartphone ODM shipments are set to grow 12.3 percent this year, which will represent a rebound after overall shipments declined 11.5 percent quarter-on-quarter in the first three months of the year.
AI REVOLUTION: The event is to take place from Wednesday to Friday at the Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center’s halls 1 and 2 and would feature more than 1,100 exhibitors Semicon Taiwan, an annual international semiconductor exhibition, would bring leaders from the world’s top technology firms to Taipei this year, the event organizer said. The CEO Summit is to feature nine global leaders from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), Applied Materials Inc, Google, Samsung Electronics Co, SK Hynix Inc, Microsoft Corp, Interuniversity Microelectronic Centre and Marvell Technology Group Ltd, SEMI said in a news release last week. The top executives would delve into how semiconductors are positioned as the driving force behind global technological innovation amid the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, the organizer said. Among them,
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