Taiwan is expected to be the world’s largest semiconductor fab equipment spender next year at US$23 billion, due to heavy spending by local foundry companies led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), international trade group SEMI said yesterday.
Taiwanese chipmakers would spend 4 percent more next year on fab equipment than this year, SEMI said.
Ranking second, South Korea would increase its fab equipment spending by 41 percent to US$22 billion next year to reflect a recovery in demand for memory chips, while spending in China would slide to US$20 billion due to US export controls, SEMI said.
Photo: Reuters
“Despite the constraints, Chinese foundry suppliers and IDMs [integrated device manufacturers] are expected to continue investments in mature process nodes,” it said.
Washington imposed bans on the supply of 14-nanometer and 7-nanometer chipmaking equipment to China last year, aiming to slow China’s advances in technology.
The US is expected to hold steady at fourth spot, with spending jumping 23 percent to a record US$14 billion next year, while Europe and the Middle East would also post record investments, with spending soaring 41.5 percent to US$8 billion next year, SEMI said.
Fab equipment spending in Japan and Southeast Asia would likely increase to US$7 billion and US$3 billion respectively next year, it said.
Global chipmakers would see fab equipment spending rebound by 15 percent next year to US$97 billion to cope with recovering demand for chips used in high-performance computing devices and memory chips following inventory adjustments, it said.
In March, SEMI estimated that fab equipment spending would rise to US$92 billion next year.
By segment, foundry companies would lead semiconductor expansion this year with total investments of US$49 billion, up 1 percent from last year, it said.
Next year, their spending would increase 5 percent to US$51.5 billion, as chipmakers expand capacity in leading-edge and mature process nodes, SEMI said.
Memorychip makers led by Samsung Electronics Co would spend US$27 billion on equipment next year, a 65 percent increase, thanks to a 40 percent raise in spending by DRAM makers and a 113 percent jump in spending by NAND producers, it said.
SEMI president and CEO Ajit Manocha said the decline in equipment investment this year is less serious than expected, while the recovery next year would be better than forecast earlier.
“The trend suggests the semiconductor industry is turning the corner on the downturn and [is] on a path back to robust growth fueled by healthy chip demand,” Manocha said in a statement.
Last year, inventory corrections took a toll on equipment spending with global spending sinking 15 percent annually to US$84 billion, SEMI said.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
PRESSURE EXPECTED: The appreciation of the NT dollar reflected expectations that Washington would press Taiwan to boost its currency against the US dollar, dealers said Taiwan’s export-oriented semiconductor and auto part manufacturers are expecting their margins to be affected by large foreign exchange losses as the New Taiwan dollar continued to appreciate sharply against the US dollar yesterday. Among major semiconductor manufacturers, ASE Technology Holding Co (日月光), the world’s largest integrated circuit (IC) packaging and testing services provider, said that whenever the NT dollar rises NT$1 against the greenback, its gross margin is cut by about 1.5 percent. The NT dollar traded as strong as NT$29.59 per US dollar before trimming gains to close NT$0.919, or 2.96 percent, higher at NT$30.145 yesterday in Taipei trading