TSMC maintains leadership in the chip factories and SMIC threatens Samsung’s position

TSMC has been the chip industry leader for some time. In part, this is due to the speed with which the Taiwanese giant adopts new technologies. According to a new Trendforce report, TSMC not only maintains leadership but Samsung Foundry now has a disappointing market share.

In the first quarter of 2025, TSMC reached 67.6% of chip market sharea small increase over the fourth quarter of 2024. The result was obtained even with a 5%revenue drop, which totaled $ 25.5 billion.

The impressive number, as the company practically dominates the market, is the result of the company’s commitment to meet the demand of the AI ​​segment and how Nvidia and its partners are involved in a “wave of sales”. That is, closing business for clusters and large -scale AI hardware.

Most of the demand is driven by Nvidia on TSMC, but there is a significant participation from Apple, who has been a crucial client of the Taiwanese giant.

It is important to note that the information in the table refers to the 10 largest companies in the sector and, therefore, the total represents 97% of the market.

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More challenges for Samsung

Samsung has been considered a large TSMC rival, but now it has 7.7% of the market. The company registered a 11.3% drop over the previous quarter, reaching revenue of US $ 2.89 billion in the first quarter.

The company’s poor performance is mainly due to its inability to deliver previous projects and Migration of demand to TSMC. Not only in the foundry is the company at risk, but in the DRAM market, it was surpassed for the first time after 33 years.

At the current pace, Samsung risks being replaced by Chinese SMIC in terms of market sharesince the Chinese company achieved a quarterly increase reaching 6.0%. SMIC has benefited from early purchases in response to American tariffs and Chinese subsidies.

As a result, the company was able to mitigate the fall of ASPs revenue, resulting in an increase of 1.8% in revenue, to US $ 2.25 billion. Currently, the company occupies third place in the ranking.

Perspectives for the sector

According to the Trendforce report, The global foundry industry recorded revenue of $ 36.4 billion in the first quarter of 2025. The value represents a 5.4% drop from the previous quarter.

The fall was softened by urgent urgent requests from customers Before the deadline of reciprocal tariff exemption from the USAas well as the continuity of the impulse of China’s consumer subsidy program in 2024. These factors help compensate for the typical seasonal fall.

For the second quarter, it is expected that the effects of early purchases driven by tariffs decrease and lead to a widespread deceleration of the market.

Continuous demand from China’s subsidies program, increasing new smartphone models, and stable AI HPC demand should sustain the use of capacity and boost a revenue recovery of the top 10 castings.

Business Characteristics

The foundry is the reference chip manufacturing stage for large technology companies such as Nvidia, Apple and AMD, the main customers that boost TSMC’s recipes to new levels.

Nor is it wrong to say that TSMC competitors are indolentunable to innovate with more recent processes and are also finding problems with existing nodes.

Today, little or nothing prevents the growth of TSMC. Especially considering the company’s progress in its US and next generation facilities, such as technologies N2 and A16, which should raise revenue to new levels.nvidia

Ironically, a company that can rival TSMC, or try, is Intel, which does not even appear in the table. The blue giant recently obtained advances with 18a process and can rival TSMC in the SRAM density. Not only, the 2nm chips of the best performance than Samsung’s TSMC and SF2 N2 and SF2.

Fonte: Trendforce.