In the mobile SoC market TSMC dominates outrageously.
In the first quarter of this year 2022, 7 out of every 10 chips shipped worldwide for mobile devices came from TSMC foundries. Even if the smartphone market is showing signs of concern, the Taiwanese company’s performance is clearly impressive. It is mainly driven by its customers Apple , Qualcomm and MediaTek who equip the main mobile solutions in the world. For despite a drop in volumes (about 5%), TSMC was able to benefit from a strong increase in revenue due to the demand for chipsets that has shifted to more expensive 5G smartphones. As a result, TSMC’s revenue increased by 23% year-on-year.
Samsung, paradoxically, is doing well. Behind the hegemony of TSMC, paradoxically, Samsung is picking up colors but remains far away. The Korean company accounts for 30% of the volume of global chipsets for smartphones. Despite relatively lower yields than its competitor TSMC on the latest generation of engraving processes, Samsung Foundry has been able to make slight progress, particularly with the “in-house” SoCs of the Exynos family, but also part of the volume still entrusted by Qualcomm. We think of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 SoC, which continued to sell very well largely due to its presence in the series of Samsung Galaxy S22 smartphones.
It is the sales volumes of this device that allow Samsung to regain the lead on the volumes sold of latest generation chips, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 coming from the “4nm” process of Samsung Foundry.
