Good news from China's semiconductor industry, TSMC's market position is declining!
Good news from China's semiconductor industry, TSMC's market position is declining!
Good news from China's semiconductor industry, TSMC's market position is declining!
At present, the demand for technological development has fully entered the era of intelligence, and "chips" have become the core driving force. However, currently, the US technology system is the leading force in this field, which has made the development of Chinese semiconductors increasingly difficult.
After the relevant restrictions were implemented, the United States used its advantage in the supply chain to unilaterally cut off cooperation between international companies and Chinese enterprises. TSMC's power outage had a significant impact on domestic chip manufacturers, but with the continuous fermentation of the incident, it actually stimulated the determination of Chinese enterprises to localize.
After the comprehensive deployment of smart cars and the Internet of Things, the demand for mature process chips has doubled, which directly gives Chinese enterprises the opportunity to break through. After three years of precipitation, there have been frequent good news in the entire chip industry chain, and TSMC's market position continues to decline. What kind of market effect will it have?
Changes in the chip market landscape
TSMC is currently the most advanced chip foundry. Although Samsung also has the same technology, there is still a big gap in yield. Top manufacturers such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Intel are also more inclined to entrust orders to TSMC. Currently, more than 50% of global orders come from TSMC's foundry, and its position is self-evident.
But since entering 2022, the global chip market landscape has undergone changes. TSMC's market value once exceeded $700 billion, but now it is less than $350 billion, with a direct loss of over 50%. The factors that have caused this result are relatively complex.
After the comprehensive deployment of smart cars and the Internet of Things, the demand for mature process chips has doubled, which has directly given Chinese enterprises a breakthrough. The most direct reason is the impact of chip restrictions. Under the forced intervention of the United States, they were forced to interrupt their cooperation with the second largest customer Huawei, resulting in a current market share of less than 8% in mainland China. After establishing factories in the United States, the market share of North American customers has reached as high as 72%, overly relying on American enterprise customers and causing their international status to continue to decline.
Another important reason is the decline in advanced technology production capacity. TSMC announced a long time ago that it would gradually shut down EUV lithography machines from the end of the year, indicating that it had already sensed the "danger signal". SK Hynix, as the world's second largest storage chip manufacturer, previously announced that its market share investment would be reduced by 70% -80% in 2023, and many manufacturers have followed suit.
As for the reasons for reducing expenses, there is now an accurate answer. According to the predictions of well-known analysts, the mobile phone industry has entered a "cold winter", with demand for Android phones alone cut by 170 million. Although the sales of Apple iPhone 14 are still good, the sense of powerlessness in the future has gradually emerged.
This time, 3nm process chips were not used on the iPhone 14. In fact, it is not that the cost is too high as Apple claimed, but that the competitiveness of Android phones is clearly insufficient. Apple phones are already at the top of the market, and there is no need to pay more costs for such a small improvement. The use of different chips in the standard and Pro versions confirms this point.
The development of advanced technology has encountered a bottleneck. Although the technology has been improved, its performance in related aspects is unsatisfactory. Apple naturally will not pay for TSMC's immature technology, and Samsung's 3nm technology has also not received any customer orders.
Chinese semiconductor industry reports good news
Huawei, TSMC and other manufacturers have been moving towards advanced packaging processes to solve the problems of chip cost and performance. The chip stacking process developed has been validated on Apple's M1 chip, which not only saves costs but also meets corresponding performance requirements. More importantly, it does not require the use of the most advanced technology.
According to media reports, China's Changdian Technology has become the third largest advanced packaging giant in the world, achieving an annual revenue of 15 billion yuan. What is even more exciting is that among the top ten advanced packaging companies in the world, eight are from China and use domestically produced lithography machines, successfully achieving self-reliance in the packaging and testing process.
After listening to the advice of academicians, SMIC has deployed a large amount of mature 28 nanometer production capacity. Faced with the increasing demand for mature processes in China, SMIC has already made a lot of profits. Compared with TSMC's situation, it is slightly awkward, and its market position has been gradually declining.
At present, TSMC's market share in mainland China is less than 8%, showing a downward trend year by year, and these shares are naturally only left with mature processes. Faced with the restrictions of the United States, the production capacity and inventory in the mainland market have been affected. Although the United States has relaxed its one-year authorization to expand its Nanjing factory, according to the current situation, it is of no help.
Excessive obsession with advanced technology has also doomed TSMC's competitiveness to decline in the coming years, and more application scenarios will be in mature processes. This may be the reason why the US has relaxed its one-year authorization, fearing that all production capacity will be concentrated in the Chinese market.
After achieving a breakthrough in domestic lithography machines, we are only one step away from completely beautifying our chip production capacity. However, from the moment TSMC announced its plan to build a factory in the United States, it had already chosen the wrong partner, and it is uncertain what kind of international status it will have in the future. What do you think about this?