Second tier foundries lose market share
Second-ranked Globalfoundries Inc. managed to grow its sales by 10.3 percent in 2017 compared with the previous year – higher than the 9.1 percent growth achieved by TSMC. As a result Globalfoundries’ market share moved up from 9.5 percent in 2016 to 9.7 percent in 2017.
This performance by Globalfoundries may undercut protests that the company has reportedly made to authorities in Europe and China that TSMC is dominating the market and using illegal practices to maintain that domination (see Report: Globalfoundries asks China to probe TSMC and Report: GlobalFoundries accuses TSMC of unfair selling).
Top eight pure-play and IDM foundries ranked by 2017 revenues. Source: IC Insights.
With the overall foundry market growing by 8 percent and moving from $57.7 billion in 2016 to $62.3 billion in 2017 both TSMC and Globalfoundries saw their market share creep upwards. TSMC’s 2017 sales were over 5x that of Globalfoundries and more than 10x the sales of the fifth-ranked foundry SMIC.
Elsewhere in IC Insights’ foundry ranking Samsung’s and SMIC’s annual growth in foundry stalled going from 65 percent in 2016 to 4 percent in 2017 in Samsung’s case; and from 30 percent annual growth to 6 percent in SMIC’s case. It is notable that IC Insights has included Samsung on this ranking where it has previously kept pure-play foundries together in one ranking and omitted IDMs such as Samsung.
IBM, a former major IDM foundry, was acquired by Globalfoundries in mid-2015 while IDM foundries Fujitsu and Intel fell short of the $1.0 billion sales threshold last year.
The highest growth in the ranking was demonstrated by Hua Hong Group, PowerChip and Tower Semiconductor with 18, 17 and 11 percent, respectively.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
SMIC, Tower, X-Fab are strongest growing pure-play foundries
Report: Globalfoundries asks China to probe TSMC
Report: GlobalFoundries accuses TSMC of unfair selling
TSMC responds to antitrust investigation reports