As we all know, in recent years, the ranking and share of several major manufacturers in the chip foundry market have been relatively stable, especially the top five, which has basically not changed much.
However, with the release of the data for the third quarter of 2023, we found that there seems to have been a big change in this quarter, and it is not too exaggerated to say that the reshuffle is underway.
The shares of the third, fourth, and fifth places have actually become the same.
As shown in the figure above, TSMC's share in the third quarter was as high as 59%, far ahead, followed by Samsung's share of 13%, and then the share of GF, UMC, and SMIC was 6%, if you omit the decimal point behind, these three manufacturers are tied for third place.
You must know that SMIC's share has always been the fifth, behind GF and UMC, and the previous share difference was still large, but this time it has become the same.
Why is this so?In fact, it is not difficult to understand that in the past year or so, the global economic chip industry has declined, everyone's performance is not very good, and the capacity utilization rate has been greatly reduced.
Based on the Chinese market, SMIC continues to expand production and receives a large number of orders from domestic companies, so although its revenue is also declining, the decline is not as bad as that of the other two companies.
In addition, the domestic chip industry has already recovered in 2023, and in April, domestic chip production has grown against the trend, and it has been growing for 8 consecutive months, so SMIC's revenue has also risen.
Next, with the continuous development of the domestic chip industry, SMIC is expected to surpass UMC and GF and sit firmly on the throne of the world's third largest foundry, what do you think?
In addition, I will also show you a data, that is, the process distribution of the global chip foundry market in the third quarter.
As shown in the figure above, 5 4nm accounts for 23%, 16 14 12nm accounts for 13%, and 7 6nm accounts for 12%, which means that the advanced process below 28nm has accounted for 48% of the share.
The mature process of 28nm and above accounts for 52% of the share, which shows that the foundry market is becoming more and more concentrated in advanced technology, so SMIC has to refuel and strive to narrow the process gap with TSMC and Samsung.