With the rise of the fabless IC companies in China over the past 10 years, the demand for foundry services has also risen in that country.
Figure 1 shows that the China market was the only major region that showed an increase in pure-play foundry sales last year.
Moreover, the European and Japanese pure-play foundry markets each displayed a double-digit decline in 2019.
China’s total share of the 2018 pure-play foundry market jumped by five percentage points as compared to 2017 to 19%, exceeding the share held by the rest of the Asia-Pacific region by five points.
Overall, China was responsible for essentially all of the total pure-play foundry market increase in 2018. However, in 2019, the U.S./China trade war served to slow economic growth in China and the country’s foundry marketshare increased only one percentage point last year to 20%.
In total, pure-play foundry sales in China jumped by 42% in 2018 to $10.7 billion, more than 8x the 5% increase for the total pure-play foundry market that year.
Moreover, in 2019, pure-play foundry sales to China increased by 6%, eight points better than the 2% decline registered for the total pure-play foundry market last year.
In 2019, TSMC stated that about 25% of its 400+ customers are based in China. TSMC and UMC each registered double-digit sales increases to China last year. UMC showed the highest sales increase into China with a 19% jump. This increase was driven by the continued ramp up of its 300mm Fab 12X located in Xiamen, China, which opened in late 2016 and has a current capacity of about 22.7K 300mm wafers per month.
In contrast, it appears that many of China-based SMIC’s Chinese customers encountered slow business conditions. SMIC’s 2019 sales in China dropped by 8% as compared to a total company sales decline of 7% last year.
From：electronicsweekly