Like us, you must remember those politicians explaining that we were all too small to oppose the Chinese and American technology giants. However, these last months have just reminded us that the production of semiconductors is mainly controlled by South Korea (48 M inhabitants) with Samsung and especially Taiwan (23 M inhabitants) with its flagship TSMC.
TSMC currently has the most advanced manufacturing technology. Although the company is opening production facilities around the world, it plans to keep most of the production of the future most advanced processes, N3 and N2, in Taiwan. Meanwhile, other Taiwanese foundries such as UMC, Vanguard and PSMC cover applications that do not require advanced processes, such as automotive and IoT. Despite the awakening of the Americans in particular, Taiwan is still ahead of the curve with six scheduled openings of future foundries while the U.S. plans to build three new plants.
China and the US are in a race to gain some independence. But despite the resources of these two giants, Trendforce expects Taiwan to still control 44% of the world’s foundry capacity by 2025 and up to 58% of the world’s capacity for advanced processes (16nm and below). Not bad for a “small” country with 1/3 the population of France…
