Taiwan's TSMC continues to lead worldwide foundry market: report

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has continued to dominate the worldwide semiconductor foundry market in terms of sales, says IC Insights report.
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TSMC remains in the first place for a fifth straight year with US$32.2 billion in sales last year, followed by its U.S. rival Global Foundries, and by Taiwan's UMC, while TSMC's sales were five times higher than the second-ranked Global Foundries. 

Samsung of South Korea came fourth, followed by China's SMIC, Taiwan's Powerchip, China's Huahong Group, and Israeli chip maker TowerJazz. The top eight foundry leaders accounted for 88 percent of the US$62.3 billion worldwide foundry market last year. 

Also, Taiwan remains the world's largest hub for chip foundries. In the list, three out of eight are headquartered in Taiwan, making up 61.8 percent of the world's foundry market.   

With the barriers to entry into the chip-making business being so high and rising, IC Insights expects less changes of the ranking in the future. 
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Earlier this year, the contract chip maker joined U.S. tech giants Microsoft, Intel, Alphabet and Apple to be named as one of the world's top 10 firms in the technology sector. 

By: Sophia Yang, April 25, 2018
Source: Taiwan News