TSMC is one of the largest semiconductor manufacturers in the world, producing chips for the world’s leading technology companies such as Qualcomm, Apple, AMD, NVIDIA, etc. Any decision made by the manufacturer could affect the future of these companies and their products.
We’ve all heard about the global shortage of inventory of all products launched in this last part of the year, and while this affects all companies, AMD is probably the most affected due to the large number of products it has in production right now. Further complicating matters is the fact that a decision by TSMC regarding wafers could cause a new headache for the red team.
Financial analyst Dan Nysted revealed that the Taiwanese media is hinting at a change of course at TSMC to increase operating margins. To achieve this, TSMC would cut wafer allocations to its major customers to allow new companies to increase their wafer prices.
According to an unnamed source in Taiwan, TSMC would already “cancel a sales allocation (price cut) for major customers. Another analyst, Patrick Moorhead, pointed out that the solution to this problem would be for TSMC to be able to continually expand production, which is not happening.
Samsung Foundry is highlighted here, which is reported to be “growing faster year-on-year than TSMC for the first time in years.” This is because the company has secured some strong customers like Qualcomm and NVIDIA. In addition to having a “good 5nm node,” Samsung’s 3nm GAA (gate-all-around) is expected to be very competitive.
This could even be a paradigm shift because if everything goes like this, some of TSMC’s biggest customers could switch to Samsung.