Could they raise prices on wafers if demand was weak?
Silicon Wafer Suppliers Set to Raise Prices
May 23, 2000 (TAIPEI) -- Thanks to a global shortage of semiconductor industry capacity, contract wafer foundries such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd. and United Microelectronics Corp. have made fortunes in the past few months.
Their material suppliers, whose profits have been falling recently, may now also get a slice of the cake.
Material suppliers, providing downstream plants for silicon wafers, plan to raise the prices of wafers in the third quarter of this year by between 5 percent and 10 percent.
Chung De Electronics Material Co., Taiwan's largest silicon-wafer supplier, pointed out that the price of first-rate silicon wafers has remained unchanged since 1995 at between US$220 and US$240.
The company blamed the price standstill on a series of capacity-expansion projects among global 8-inch wafer fabs over the past few years, resulting in a glut of silicon wafers. It added that Japanese silicon-wafer fabs had made the problem worse with their throat-cut pricing strategies.
Currently, Chung De churns out nearly 165,000 units of silicon wafers a month, far below its full capacity of 240,000 units.
(Commercial Times, Taiwan) |
