The United States suffered heavy losses, and TSMC changed its strategy and actively received 7nm orders from Chinese companies
Some time ago, there were many ** who said that TSMC's 7nm chip orders increased some time ago because TSMC suddenly received a large number of 7nm chip orders from Chinese companies, and almost all of these chip orders are advanced AI chips.
For example, Ali Pingtou, ZTE Microelectronics and other companies have sent their own 7nm chips to TSMC's foundry, and now ZTE Microelectronics has become one of TSMC's three major mainland customers.
Also due to the 7nm wafer orders of Chinese companies, TSMC's current 7nm process capacity utilization rate has increased significantly, from less than 70% to more than 80% before, and it may be increased in the future.
In fact, for TSMC, this behavior is not surprising, since the 7nm capacity utilization rate is low, of course, it is natural to find a way to receive more orders?
However, due to the special situation at present, we will also let everyone discuss it.
On the one hand, TSMC's factories in the United States are currently blocked, and TSMC previously planned to build 5nm and 3nm chip factories in the United States, with an investment of up to $40 billion.
But the current progress is not ideal, after all, the United States industrial chain is incomplete, workers have high wages on the one hand, and relatively poor skills on the other, and they are unwilling to work overtime, resulting in TSMC riding the tiger and suffering heavy losses, so many people think that this may be a signal that TSMC is turning to the mainland market.
On the other hand, because of the emergence of Huawei's Kirin 9000S screen chip a few days ago, many people think that TSMC is still under psychological suppression when it receives a large number of 7nm orders from Chinese companies this time.
After all, the current 7nm chips are not only produced by TSMC, once TSMC no longer takes orders, this part of the market may not be available in the future, so TSMC takes a large number of orders on purpose.
In fact, Chinese mainland is the world's largest tablet market, accounting for one-third of the global share, so no tablet company can and dare not give up the Chinese mainland market.
However, our wafer manufacturing process is relatively weak, and the wafer design level is basically equivalent to the world's leading level, so domestic design companies do need advanced wafer foundries like TSMC.
But at the same time, we ourselves are trying to overcome this situation, which is paradoxical for TSMC. TSMC wants us to continue to develop the design, but the manufacturing can't move too fast so that we can have a lot of orders.
As a result, TSMC swayed back and forth between these contradictions, looking for balance.