www.koreaherald.com, Mar. 15, 2022 –
Samsung Electronics Co. expanded its share of the global foundry market in the fourth quarter, slightly narrowing down the gap with the industry's leader TSMC, a report showed Tuesday.
The South Korean chipmaker's share rose 1.1 percentage points to reach 18.3 percent in the October-December period, according to market analyst firm TrendForce, while the dominant market player Taiwan's TSMC shed 1 percent to 52.1 percent.
Samsung's foundry business grew 15.3 percent from the previous quarter, compared with TSMC's 5.8 percent on-quarter growth.
The report said Samsung was the only contract chip manufacturer among the industry's top five players to increase its market share on-year in the fourth quarter.
TrendForce attributed Samsung's growth to "the gradual completion of new advanced 5/4nm process capacity and the mass production of new flagship products from major client Qualcomm."
It said, however, the slower ramp-up of advanced process capacity is expected to erode overall profitability for Samsung, and one of its top priorities should be "improving advanced process capacity and yield."
During a conference call following the fourth-quarter earnings result in late January, Samsung said its foundry business logged record-high revenue in the quarter, without providing detailed figures.