Global top ten foundries’ revenue ranking in the first quarter is out with TSMC holding a 48.1% market share

According to latest report of TRI, advanced process driving force falls due to demand weakness of most terminal markets including smart phone, so wafer foundry industry will have severe challenges in the first quarter of 2019.
Total value of global wafer foundry in the first quarter has a 16% recession compared with the same period of 2018, which reaches $14.62 billion. Top three in market share ranking are TSMC, Samsung and GF. Although TSMC has a 48.1% market share, its revenue growth of  the first quarter declines about 18%, according to report of TRI.

Wafer foundries’ ranking in the first quarter of 2019 is similar to last year, only Powerchip takes a risk of being surpassed by TowerJazz due to 12-inch foundry demand sliding, said by TRI. According to first quarter performance of top ten foundries including TSMC, Samsung LSI, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, UMC, SMIC and Powerchip,  all of their first quarter profits decline by double digit compared with last year, because of weakness of 12-inch wafer foundry demand.
Although short supply of 8-inch wafer capacity has been eased, its annual growth still doesn’t perform as well as last year on a review of manufacturers focusing on 8-inch foundry business, such as TowerJazz, Vanguard, Hua Hong and Dongbu HiTek. Compared with double digit reduction of 12-inch wafer foundries in the first quarter, 8-inch foundry holds its ground in relative stagnant semiconductor market.
TSMC ranks the first of wafer foundry industry in the first quarter, although it is affected by troubles including wafer scrap caused by photoresist accident, poor sales of key smart phone and crypto-currency boom fading. With an outlook of 2019 market, besides first quarter’s orders delaying to the second quarter, cooperation with clients such as Hisilicon, Qualcomm, Apple and AMD will contribute to revenue, as a result, revenue is hopeful to rise from the bottom in the first quarter.
Samsung is in the second place of market share thanks to its System LSI’ help after deviding wafer foundry business in the first half of 2017. It is predicted by TRI that revenue from external customers only account for 40%. Samsung is promoting Multi-Project Wafer, MPW. Besides actively fight for advanced process service, 8-inch production line in Giheung, Korea, will make a contribution to Samsung’s wafer foundry. It aims at obtaining 25% of market share before 2023.
Total value of global wafer foundry industry will be close to $70 billion in 2019. However, there are various factors affecting market demand of the first quarter, besides weakness of consumer products demand, excessive inventory, auto market demand reduction, Intel CPU shortage and China economic slowdown, instability of global trade also brings great uncertainty. If global political and economic doesn’t obviously improve in the first half year, TRI holds a conservative view of global wafer foundry in 2019, even not exclude rare negative growth of total value.