Mainland chip companies do not give orders, TSMC can only reduce prices**, and netizens bring humiliation on themselves.
TSMC has always been the absolute king of the chip foundry market. Taking 3nm chips as an example, Samsung initially took the lead in launching the 3nm chip process, but because the yield rate was only 30%-40% and the production cost was high, Samsung's 3nm chip process could only stay inside the factory, and even Samsung itself was unwilling to use it.
In contrast, TSMC is different, although TSMC's 3nm chip process was launched half a year later than Samsung, but whether it is the yield rate, production cost, or production capacity, TSMC has met the needs of chip manufacturers.
To this end, Apple ordered 3nma17 from TSMC and Qualcomm ordered 3nmSnapdragon8Gen3 from TSMC....
TSMC currently has orders for all 3nm chips worldwide. As a result of these orders, TSMC's chip foundry orders account for more than 50% of global chip foundry orders.
But TSMC did not have a good time some time ago, and it was reported that in the third quarter of 2023, TSMC's revenue fell by 10%, and its profit fell by 25%.
It's hard to imagine that a company like TSMC is not advancing but retreating, with both revenue and profits declining. You must know that chip foundry is a highly profitable industry, with a profit margin of nearly 50%, which is even more exaggerated than the profit margins of Moutai and Apple.
In this case, TSMC's revenue and profits are declining, indicating that TSMC does not have enough orders.
In fact, at the beginning of 2023, global chip demand will be weak, and chip manufacturers, including NVIDIA and Intel, have begun to reduce chip orders. And Apple's demand for the A17 chip has also declined because the iPhone 15 sales are lower than expected.
On the contrary, this is not the case in the mainland market, which has led SMIC foundries to spend huge sums of money to build factories. According to reports, SMIC has invested 170 billion yuan in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Tianjin and other places to build wafer fabs, which are mainly based on 28nm wafer manufacturing processes, and 28nm wafers can already meet more than 90% of the needs of mainland wafer fabs.
In other words, SMIC's wafer capacity is sufficient to meet the demand of mainland fabs, which in turn negatively impacts TSMC's 28nm wafer production orders.
In order to increase orders for mature processes such as 28nm, TSMC has taken the ** measure of reducing prices by 2%-5% for 28nm processes. Soon after, TSMC reduced the manufacturing process of 7nm chips by 5%-10%.
Even so, mainland chipmakers have not placed orders with TSMC to buy 28nm and 7nm chips, which makes TSMC quite helpless.
In fact, this is also very understandable, Huawei placed orders for 5nm, 7nm, 10nm and 14nm Kirin chips to TSMC back then, and TSMC made a lot of money with these orders. But after Huawei was suppressed, TSMC"Turn your face and don't recognize people", not OEM for Huawei.
This shows that TSMC's chip production capacity is not stable and is not controlled by TSMC itself. If mainland chip manufacturers place orders with TSMC, it is inevitable that something similar to Huawei's Kirin chip will happen. If so, aren't mainland chip manufacturers lifting a stone to shoot themselves in the foot?
For this reason, some netizens said:"Mainland IC manufacturers do not order IC from TSMC, this situation is caused by TSMC, and mainland IC manufacturers have no choice.
TSMC's 2%-10% price reduction on mature and 7nm processes may temporarily change the situation of insufficient wafer orders. However, TSMC, as the world's largest chip foundry, is obviously not a long-term solution to increase orders by simply relying on price cuts.
At present, it seems that the mainland market also has a large demand for mature processes and 7nm processes, which can make up for the lack of orders for TSMC chips. It is hoped that TSMC and mainland manufacturers will go in the same direction, which will be mutually beneficial.