Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday promoted Y.J. Mii (米玉傑) and Y.P. Chyn (秦永沛) as co-chief operating officers (COO) of the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, signaling the formation of a succession team.
The latest executive reshuffle comes after TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) in December last year announced that he is to retire this year. CEO C.C. Wei (魏哲家) has been recommended as his successor while continuing to serve in his current position.
Mii and Chyn, as well as the company’s human resources, finance, legal and corporate planning units, are to report directly to Wei, a company statement released after the board of directors approved the appointment during a special board meeting yesterday said.
Photo: Grace Hung, Taipei Times
All other organizations are to report to the co-COOs. The new personnel adjustments and organizational structure take effect today, it said.
TSMC did not disclose details about the new COOs’ job responsibilities.
The company appointed Cliff Hou (侯永清), senior vice president of Europe and Asia sales and corporate research, as Chyn’s deputy, while Kevin Zhang (張曉強), senior vice president of TSMC’s business development, is to be Mii’s deputy.
Chyn is currently responsible for the operation and management of all fabs in Taiwan and overseas. He also co-leads TSMC’s Overseas Operations Office, which is responsible for supporting the company’s global expansion and accelerating the organizational effectiveness of overseas operations, information on the company’s Web site says.
Mii is in charge of the company’s research and development (R&D). He joined TSMC in 1994 as a manager at Fab 3 and then joined the R&D unit in 2001. In 2011, Mii was appointed vice president of R&D and in November 2016, he was promoted to senior vice president.
This is not the first time TSMC has adopted a co-COO management model. In 2012, the chipmaker’s board appointed three executives — Chiang Shang-yi (蔣尚義), Liu and Wei — to share the responsibilities of COO.
The three took turns taking charge of the company’s three major divisions: R&D, operations or manufacturing and business development.
In 2018, Liu was tapped as company chairman after founding chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀) retired from his post. Wei became company CEO.
“C.C. has been on the job of CEO for six years. In fact, he is the most well-prepared CEO,” Chang said during his speech at a ceremony in which Wei was awarded an honorary doctorate by National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Hsinchu yesterday.
Wei is a CEO with comprehensive experiences in the company’s three key divisions, in addition to sales and marketing, Chang said.
He was appointed head of the chipmaker’s first business development division in charge of sales and marketing in 2019, Chang said.
Prior to that, Wei was responsible for managing the company’s 6-inch and 8-inch fabs. He also worked at the R&D divisions of TSMC and Texas Instruments, Chang said.
In his speech, Wei said he has learned a lot from Chang, including how to be a trusted partner of customers.
The first step in building trust with customers is not to compete with them, Wei said, adding that this is the “essence of running a foundry model.”
Moreover, it is something that TSMC’s major rivals, one from South Korea and the other from California, can never catch up with, he said.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: The chipmaker last month raised its capital spending by 28 percent for this year to NT$32 billion from a previous estimate of NT$25 billion Contract chipmaker Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (力積電子) yesterday launched a new 12-inch fab, tapping into advanced chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) packaging technology to support rising demand for artificial intelligence (AI) devices. Powerchip is to offer interposers, one of three parts in CoWoS packaging technology, with shipments scheduled for the second half of this year, Powerchip chairman Frank Huang (黃崇仁) told reporters on the sidelines of a fab inauguration ceremony in the Tongluo Science Park (銅鑼科學園區) in Miaoli County yesterday. “We are working with customers to supply CoWoS-related business, utilizing part of this new fab’s capacity,” Huang said, adding that Powerchip intended to bridge
Microsoft Corp yesterday said that it would create Thailand’s first data center region to boost cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure, promising AI training to more than 100,000 people to develop tech. Bangkok is a key economic player in Southeast Asia, but it has lagged behind Indonesia and Singapore when it comes to the tech industry. Thailand has an “incredible opportunity to build a digital-first, AI-powered future,” Microsoft chairman and chief executive officer Satya Nadella said at an event in Bangkok. Data center regions are physical locations that store computing infrastructure, allowing secure and reliable access to cloud platforms. The global embrace of AI
Qualcomm Inc, the world’s biggest seller of smartphone processors, gave an upbeat forecast for sales and profit in the current period, suggesting demand for handsets is increasing after a two-year slump. Revenue in the three months ended in June will be US$8.8 billion to US$9.6 billion, the company said in a statement Wednesday. Excluding certain items, earnings will be US$2.15 to US$2.35 a share. Analysts had projected sales of US$9.08 billion and earnings of US$2.16 a share. The outlook signals that the smartphone market has begun to bounce back, tracking with Qualcomm’s forecast that demand would gradually recover this year. The San