Huawei Mate60Pro has been on the market for five months, and TSMC is in a hurry!
Huawei is TSMC's second largest customer, bringing TSMC 30 billion yuan in revenue a year, and this number is still growing, TSMC cannot easily give up this business.
Judging from the relaxation of the ban on chip manufacturing in the United States and TSMC's temporary refusal to provide Kirin chips to Huawei, TSMC is still using its idle production capacity to provide Huawei with Kirin chip foundry services. However, when TSMC Chairman Liu Deyin stopped OEM to Huawei, he said: Huawei's order loss will not affect TSMC's revenue. Building a new production line with American technology is also not a viable option now.
The reason why Liu Deyin said this is not that Huawei's orders are irrelevant, mainly because TSMC's current production equipment is basically made in the United States, and the manufacturing process in the United States cannot withstand the ban of American chips to manufacture chips for Huawei, and it is also a huge expense to rely on TSMC to build a production line that does not rely on American technology.
More critically, if Huawei is unwilling to abandon its mobile phone business, it will have to buy 4G chips from Qualcomm to preserve its mobile phone business. TSMC also provides chip manufacturing for Qualcomm, which means that Huawei's chips will eventually have to be imported from TSMC.
Of course, for TSMC, it is not completely harmless. In fact, Huawei's production capacity and shipments have suffered a serious decline due to problems such as chips and components. However, TSMC believes that it does not yet have the ability to make more advanced chips.
Even TSMC founder Zhang Zhongmou said that without TSMC's help, Chinese mainland would not have been able to manufacture advanced chips. In August, Huawei released the Mate60 smartphone, which uses advanced domestic chips.
The Maet60 is powered by the Kirin 9000, which is comparable in performance to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ and comparable to Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen2 (Hyperthread).
After the release of mate60, it is very popular both at home and abroad, and its praise is as high as 98% on major e-commerce platforms, which can be said to be in short supply, although it is necessary to make an appointment in advance, but there are still many customers who are willing to wait.
The Mate60 has only been on the market for 5 months, and TSMC has already begun to worry. In order to regain the Chinese market, TSMC has begun a series of steps.
First of all, TSMC will postpone the production of chips in the United States, according to industry analysts, it will not be mass-produced until 2028 at the earliest, when 2 nm has been out for two or three years, and TSMC in the United States is not optimistic about the 4 nm and 3 nm processes.
TSMC has also cut some of its lithography orders. Due to the loss of Chinese consumers, TSMC's production capacity has fallen to less than 80%, which is only equivalent to the level of SMIC, Huahong and other manufacturers, while TSMC's previous capacity utilization rate was as high as 90%.
TSMC announced in early January this year that it would suspend orders for 10 extreme ultraviolet lithography equipment, plan to purchase them in 2024, and reduce its spending budget.
In addition, TSMC also announced in early January this year that it would reduce the price of chips on 7nm and 28nm process chips. Please note that earlier, Apple, Qualcomm and many other American chip manufacturers in the United States had jointly called on TSMC to stop raising prices, but TSMC did not agree.
In January, TSMC also said that there will be a new chairman in 2024. Liu Deyin, the current chairman of the board of directors, will be replaced by Wei Zhejia. This move was widely interpreted by foreign media as an attempt by TSMC to return to China. In fact, unlike Wei Zhejia's emphasis on the Chinese market, Liu Deyin's interest in the American market is greater.
It can be said that in just one month, TSMC has announced a series of new measures one after another, making it easy to see that TSMC is already eager to return to the Chinese market. But the problem is that although domestic chip foundries such as SMIC and Huahong have made great progress in production capacity and technology, Chinese consumers are not interested in TSMC"Don't buy it"。
If you like it, just like it, and then **, comment, share.