Foreign media reveal TSMC's emergency predicament!
The reason why TSMC can become a giant in the foundry field is that, on the one hand, it has caught up with a good time and can strive for progress in the market with its own efforts; On the other hand, it is also because of its initial pure foundry model, which allowed it to quickly gain more customers.
But things have begun to change in recent years, and with the direct intervention of the United States in the global semiconductor industry, TSMC has lost its freedom of action, with a focus on the loss of its second-largest customer, Huawei. Five months after the return of the Kirin, TSMC is completely desperate!
Previously, Huawei, Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek and other companies mainly focused on TSMC design integrated circuits and foundry integrated circuits. The reason why they all chose TSMC is mainly because TSMC is a world-leading wafer manufacturing technology.
TSMC has many customers, but Huawei is a very special customer. In recent years, Huawei's mobile phone sales have gradually increased, becoming TSMC's second largest customer after Apple, and the first customer to contribute 25% of TSMC's revenue every year.
If nothing else, Huawei's share of TSMC's revenue will also increase rapidly, potentially catching up with Apple.
However, the United States is still changing the chip rules, and even if TSMC is unwilling, it still has to stop buying Huawei's Kirin foundry chips, losing its second largest customer, resulting in a loss of 30 billion yuan in TSMC's annual revenue.
However, Liu Deyin, who was the president of TSMC at the time, disagreed, thinking that he had played a good game of chess. On the one hand, Liu Deyin said that Huawei's empty orders would soon be filled, and then as expected, several American companies made up the empty orders.
On the other hand, Liu Deyin believes that Huawei will use Qualcomm chips in the future, so that TSMC can continue to profit from it.
In Liu Deyin's view, even including the founder Zhang Zhongmou, there is still a big gap between the mainland's tablet manufacturing technology and TSMC, at least 5 years behind, so it is impossible for the mainland to achieve high-end tablet overtaking in the short term.
Initially, Huawei did get its wish by adopting some Qualcomm Snapdragon chips. But what they didn't expect was that it only took Huawei more than three years to realize the return of its own Kirin chips and confirmed that it would be produced for the mainland industry.
Since then, Huawei has increased the variety and capacity of its own Kirin chips, and stopped using Qualcomm Snapdragon chips.
As Huawei's mobile phones equipped with Kirin chips continue to sell well, the market share of Kirin chips is increasing. Qualcomm also said that Huawei will not be able to obtain relevant benefits in the future, and the impact will naturally be directly passed on to TSMC.
In addition, the sales of Huawei phones will also squeeze the market share of other phone manufacturers, and Apple and other countries are no exception, which means that Apple and Qualcomm will have to reduce chip orders.
And Apple and Qualcomm are TSMC's largest customers, and with the impact of other customers, TSMC's losses are getting bigger and bigger.
While getting rid of Huawei's foundry chips, Liu Deyin also increased his attention to the U.S. market and invested heavily in the construction of advanced chip factories in the United States.
So, five months after the return of Huawei's Kirin chip, TSMC suddenly announced its decision: the current president Liu Deyin is about to retire and be replaced by the older president Wei Zhejia, which directly shocked the outside world.
Obviously, TSMC is not very satisfied with Liu Deyin's performance in recent years, especially ignoring mainland customers and building factories in the United States.
President Wei Zhejia is different, he attaches great importance to the mainland market and customers, and has previously led a team to Shanghai to hold a technical analysis meeting and personally visit mainland customers. This move may become the foundation for TSMC's long-term development in the future.
TSMC's removal of Liu Deyin is obviously to continue to postpone the construction of a factory in the United States, so as to reduce the losses caused to TSMC.
At the same time, TSMC has also accelerated the pace of expanding factories in the mainland. It is worth mentioning that Zhang Zhongmou also publicly expressed his support for the United States' restrictions on Chinese chips. This is clearly an attempt to slow down the development of chips in mainland China so that we can continue to rely on TSMC.
In this regard, some foreign media bluntly said that TSMC is completely anxious, and the current situation has been reversed in this way. But it was too late, and the self-inspection of Kirin chips has already given the mainland chip industry a blow to the head.
Huawei HiSilicon launched one some time ago"Vientiane nucleus"This undoubtedly hints that Huawei will have more moves on chips in 2024. It is understood that Huawei will launch more chips, and the next chip independently developed by Huawei will cover more devices.
It is impossible for even the United States to stop developing our chips, and TSMC is even more impossible; Only by actively integrating can we develop better!