The leading group of advanced foundry processes in the world, TSMC, Intel and Samsung, the advanced process layout is not easy to change much in the short term. The main reason is that the annual investment amount of advanced technology is more than 10 billion US dollars, playing capital war, mature process Even if the foundry industry has the technology and talent, it can't compete with the advanced process leader group.
TrendForce estimates that in the first half of 2018, the world's top five foundry manufacturers, in order to TSMC, Grofund, UMC, Samsung and SMIC, its market share (in terms of revenue) was 56.1%. 9.0%, 8.9%, 7.4% and 5.9%.
The industry pointed out that although SMIC ranked fifth in the global foundry, but with the US attempt to block China's semiconductor industry, mainland officials actively support local semiconductor factories, and sacrificed huge subsidies to SMIC, is a worthy opponent. Therefore, UMC's Hejian plan is listed on the mainland capital market. In addition to raising funds, it continues to expand its production capacity and expand its scale.
Industry analysis, next, UMC should continue to expand the market share of mature processes, in order to squeeze Grogand to sit on the wafer foundry second brother. Therefore, UMC eats 12-inch fab joint venture with Fujitsu Semiconductor of Japan - Mie Fujitsu Semiconductor All equity, continuous expansion of production capacity.
There are no 8 factories in the world to buy, even if you can buy, from ordering equipment to chip production, I am afraid that it will not help, buy the old 12-inch factory, equipment depreciation has ended, the benefits are actually the highest.