| | | Some good data in this article.
Why is TSMC suddenly interested in producing mature chips overseas, undaunted by China's price dumping?
Judy Lin, DIGITIMES Asia, Taipei
Friday 13 January 2023
digitimes.com
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) announced that it will increase mature technology capacity for automotive applications overseas on January 12. It is counter-intuitive for many -- isn't TSMC all about cutting-edge advanced IC manufacturing? Is it not aware that China will flood the market with cheap mature-node chips due to US sanctions only on advanced technologies? Why is TSMC undaunted by China's potential cut-throat competition with price advantage?
With geopolitical environment evolving towards decoupling, IDMs and OEMs have started to adjust their choices on the chip makers they can trust. Dell is planning to phase out China-made chips in its PCs by 2024, as reported by Nikkei Asia.
"European automotive chip IDMs are all TSMC's customers, and European chip demand is mainly for automotive ICs, so TSMC's decision to boost automotive-related capacity in Europe is reasonable, because it can better support its customers there," said DIGITIMES Research analyst Eric Chen.
As automotive products focus on reliability and zero-defect issues, and require long period of vehicle certification and customer verification (1-3 years), it is unlikely for customers to switch suppliers just because their products are cheaper.
"With the US-China issue continuing to be a concern, Chinese chipmakers' price advantages may not be useful due to geopolitical risks," said Chen, who emphasized that TSMC's products are much more expensive, but customers still chose to use TSMC's services over Chinese ones mainly due to its reliability and quality. "With uncertainties in the geopolitical environment, customers are willing to invest in the partnership with TSMC even more so."
"TSMC's mission is to be a trusted technology and capacity provider for the global logic IC industry for years to come," said TSMC CEO C. C. Wei in the 4Q22 conference call yesterday. He announced that TSMC is considering building a specialized automotive IC fab in Europe, as well as a second fab in Kumamoto Japan, both for mature nodes 28 nm and below.
"Our job is to provide the optimal solutions for our customers to enable their success. This includes technology leadership, manufacturing, cost trust, and recently, also including more geographic manufacturing flexibility is on customers' request," said Wei.
As a matter of fact, China itself also relies on importing automotive chips from Europe, the US, Japan, and Taiwan, despite being the world's largest producer of cars and a leader in electric vehicles (EVs), according to the China Automotive Technology and Research Center (CATRC), which said in a VOA interview that it expects the domestic chip industry to remain unable to cope with demand in two to three years.
Currently, advanced processing nodes (7 nm and below) contributed to 53% of TSMC's total revenues in 2022, while automotive ICs only accounted for 5%. However, automotive IC was the fastest growing platform for TSMC in 2022, up 74% YoY, surpassing the 59% growth rate of HPC and 47% of IoT, which are already deemed as sectors which maintained growth momentum during the latest PC downcycle.
United Microelectronic Corp (UMC), the second largest foundry manufacturer in Taiwan, has also been expanding mature-node capacities overseas. It has announced an US$5 billion investment in Singapore to build a new fab near its Fab12i, and plans to start volume production in 2024.
UMC CEO Jason Wang also admitted in previous earnings conference call that UMC is getting more calls from customers showing interests in its overseas capacities.
Roland Berger estimates that 95% of the more than 1,000 semiconductors used in an average internal combustion engine vehicle are considered mature or legacy chips, compared with about half of the chip content in an advanced battery electric vehicle. However, normally EVs require more than 3,000 chips to function.
The demand for mature nodes and legacy node chips will continue to grow when more and more countries are phasing out ICE vehicles by 2030. Research by BCG and McKinsey also projected that the short supply of automotive chips is likely to persist until 2026.
Looks like TSMC and UMC have spotted the opportunity and started to prepare for meeting that great demand by producing near the markets. |
|
