In the first half of 2018, the world’s top ten wafer foundry rankings were released

According to the latest report of Tiebo Industry Research Institute, the demand for high-end smart phones in the first half of 2018 was not as expected, and the boundaries of high-end and mid-range smartphones launched by manufacturers were becoming more and more blurred. The new features introduced by smart phone manufacturers did not stimulate as expected. Consumer demand for replacement, indirect suppression of smart phone manufacturers' demand for high-performance processors is not as good as before, and foundry industry is facing slower development of advanced process development, which will lower the annual growth rate of global foundry output value in the first half of this year. In the same period of last year, the projected output value reached US$29.06 billion with an annual growth rate of 7.7%. The top three market players were TSMC, Gexin, and UMC.

Topo Industrial Research Institute pointed out that in the first half of 2018, the ranking of foundry industrialists did not change much compared with the same period of last year. Only the X-Fab squeezed into the Eastern High Tech and ranked tenth. It accounted for nearly 70% of the global advanced production value. TSMC was also affected by weak demand for mobile phones in the first half of the year. Although the strength of revenue growth from advanced processes was not as expected, its market share still reached 56.1%. The second-ranked lattice core in the first half of the year was not due to a major customer structure. There have been major changes, which are smaller than the changes in revenue during the same period last year.

UMC ranked third in revenue in the first half of the year. Due to pressure from TSMC's high share of advanced manufacturing process pressure, UMC’s revenue growth was limited. Currently, 28nm and 14nm new customers are developing to develop advanced process capacity for development. In the fourth place, Samsung is actively launching the Multi-Project Wafer (MPW) to strengthen the possibility of cooperation with new customers. The fifth-ranked SMIC, its 28nm yield bottleneck, remains to be broken. Due to the good condition of local customers' billing, mature process performance is still the main force to support its revenue growth.

Due to a shift in focus to higher-yielding products, Tata Semiconductor’s revenue performance in the first half of the year was poor, and it is expected to decline by 4% from the same period of last year. Powerchip benefited from growth in demand for OEMs, and its revenue growth was bright in the first half of the year. Estimated growth of 27.1% over the same period last year.

From the perspective of 8-inch production capacity, the 8-inch production capacity in the first half of 2018 continued to fall short of supply last year. The 8 inch product OEM price increase made the 8-inch wafer fabs perform better, and the world’s advanced and Huahong’s first-half revenue estimates. The growth will be 15.1% and 13.5% respectively; X-Fab will benefit from a slight growth of 4.6% in the industrial and automotive segment.

In addition, TPI noted that wafer manufacturing companies have made new advances in third-generation semiconductors, and the world’s advanced 8-inch GaN-on-Silicon foundry service has become the world’s first 8-inch GaN-on- Manufacturers of Silicon business; X-Fab integrates SiC into 6-inch silicon fabs with a capacity of 30,000 wafers per month; Taiwanese manufacturer Han Lei is also active in the foundry business of SiC and GaN.