Manufacturers in China are increasingly looking to source chips locally because they fear that the US and other governments might prioritize domestic users of the semiconductors vital to national security, a senior executive at Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) said yesterday.
Customers are telling SMIC that they need to secure a certain amount of capacity within China itself because of concerns the industry could become more fragmented, disrupting inflows from abroad, SMIC cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said.
Companies in China, where everything from Apple Inc iPhones to Volkswagen AG vehicles are manufactured, have increasingly turned to local component suppliers and assemblers.
“What we can make here is less than 10 percent of what they need. They are worried,” Zhao told analysts on an earnings call. “In the future, we may see that there is an oversupply of chips of certain nodes in some markets, but there will still be a shortage in some other markets.”
Governments from Tokyo to Washington and Brussels are racing to bolster chip ecosystems at home, wary of a heavy reliance on manufacturing in Taiwan and South Korea after a global component shortage affected the auto and electronics industries.
The US has also sought to limit flows of technology to China, which it considers a geopolitical rival, especially if it ends up for military use.
The global shortages have been particularly acute in more mature but traditionally underinvested 28 nanometer to 40 nanometer technologies, common in vehicles and machinery, spurring an aggressive buildup in those areas, including in China. That in turn has spurred fears of a glut.
SMIC intends to spend US$5 billion on upgrades and expansion this year, much of which is to go toward three giant new plants in Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen.
SMIC itself has been hit with US sanctions, which the company said has a major impact on its advanced technology development.
Zhao did not identify the customers he was referring to, although the company’s main customers include Datang Telecom Technology Co and Qualcomm Inc, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
Shares of China’s biggest contract chip manufacturer jumped as much as 4.3 percent in Hong Kong after the company reported net income of US$534 million, beating analysts’ estimates.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) would not produce its most advanced technologies in the US next year, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the comment during an appearance at the legislature, hours after the chipmaker announced that it would invest an additional US$100 billion to expand its manufacturing operations in the US. Asked by Taiwan People’s Party Legislator-at-large Chang Chi-kai (張啟楷) if TSMC would allow its most advanced technologies, the yet-to-be-released 2-nanometer and 1.6-nanometer processes, to go to the US in the near term, Kuo denied it. TSMC recently opened its first US factory, which produces 4-nanometer
PROTECTION: The investigation, which takes aim at exporters such as Canada, Germany and Brazil, came days after Trump unveiled tariff hikes on steel and aluminum products US President Donald Trump on Saturday ordered a probe into potential tariffs on lumber imports — a move threatening to stoke trade tensions — while also pushing for a domestic supply boost. Trump signed an executive order instructing US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to begin an investigation “to determine the effects on the national security of imports of timber, lumber and their derivative products.” The study might result in new tariffs being imposed, which would pile on top of existing levies. The investigation takes aim at exporters like Canada, Germany and Brazil, with White House officials earlier accusing these economies of
Teleperformance SE, the largest call-center operator in the world, is rolling out an artificial intelligence (AI) system that softens English-speaking Indian workers’ accents in real time in a move the company claims would make them more understandable. The technology, called accent translation, coupled with background noise cancelation, is being deployed in call centers in India, where workers provide customer support to some of Teleperformance’s international clients. The company provides outsourced customer support and content moderation to global companies including Apple Inc, ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) TikTok and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. “When you have an Indian agent on the line, sometimes it’s hard
PROBE CONTINUES: Those accused falsely represented that the chips would not be transferred to a person other than the authorized end users, court papers said Singapore charged three men with fraud in a case local media have linked to the movement of Nvidia’s advanced chips from the city-state to Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) firm DeepSeek (深度求索). The US is investigating if DeepSeek, the Chinese company whose AI model’s performance rocked the tech world in January, has been using US chips that are not allowed to be shipped to China, Reuters reported earlier. The Singapore case is part of a broader police investigation of 22 individuals and companies suspected of false representation, amid concerns that organized AI chip smuggling to China has been tracked out of nations such
RSS