Huawei is TSMC's largest customer of the 7nm process, and after the revision of the chip rules, TSMC cannot ship freely, Huawei announced that it has fully entered the field of chip semiconductors and transferred chip orders to China.
Huawei Mate60Pro suddenly went on sale, using the self-developed Kirin 9000S chip, Huawei did not announce more information about the Kirin 9000S chip.
However, Bloomberg and others confirmed that the Kirin 9000S chip is close to or has reached the 7nm level, which is not only manufactured domestically, but also uses domestic equipment.
After these news, ASML officially announced that it would continue to ship 2000i and other models of lithography machines to China.
The key point is that TSMC's 7nm capacity suddenly and seriously overcapacity, which also contributed 23% of revenue in the second quarter, dropped directly to 17% in the third quarter.
According to the news, TSMC has decided to reduce the price of the 7nm process, up to 10%, in order to get more orders for 7nm chips through a low-price strategy.
Coincidentally, TSMC's 7nm process utilization rate declined from the second half of 2022, but after entering 2023, the capacity utilization rate declined rapidly, and it fell to 17% in the third quarter.
After the emergence of Huawei Kirin 9000s, TSMC 7nm suddenly had serious overcapacity, which is significant.
In fact, Zhang Zhongmou may have guessed it a long time ago, and suddenly turned his face and said that he supported the United States in launching a chip war against China.
TSMC has accelerated the shipment of 7nm chips to China since the beginning of this year, and the chip orders of ZTE Microelectronics alone have doubled in the second quarter compared with the first quarter.
This may have released three messages.
First of all, master a certain amount of advanced technology.
The Kirin 9000S chip has been in commercial use for three months, and Bloomberg said that it is close to or has reached the 7nm level, and SMIC has already completed the 7nm research and development task, and launched the N+1 and N+2 processes similar to the 7nm process.
Huawei's Xu Zhijun also publicly stated that Huawei's chip self-sufficiency rate has reached 70%, and called on domestic manufacturers to adopt more domestic chips, so as to promote the development of the domestic industrial chain.
Secondly, there is sufficient capacity.
The Kirin 9000S chip has been used in a number of Huawei's flagship mobile phones, and Huawei has also launched the Honghu 900 and Ascend 910B chips.
Qualcomm said that it is expected that the number of chips shipped to China in 2024 is expected to decrease by 40 million to 60 million, and Huawei's abandonment of Qualcomm chips is basically a certainty.
This means that there is already enough domestic production capacity.
SMIC has announced earlier that the wafer expansion work has been basically completed, and the monthly output of various chips will exceed 100 million by the end of the year.
ASML also insisted on shipping 2000i and other models of lithography machines to China, and delivered 5 billion euros worth of lithography machines to China in the second and third quarters, which also freed up a certain amount of production capacity for SMIC and others.
Finally, more and more chips are being manufactured domestically.
ASML accelerated the shipment of lithography machines to China, and said that domestic manufacturers are well prepared, and the current shipments only meet 50% of the domestic market demand, and is optimistic about the Chinese market in 2024.
Data shows that in the first three quarters of this year, chip imports decreased by 14 year-on-year6%, chip imports decreased by more than 60 billion US dollars, while the number of domestic chips continued to grow.
That is to say, in the domestic production and manufacturing of a large number of chips, including 7nm and other advanced process chips, TSMC 7nm and other serious overcapacity, it can also be understood.