LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recent global semiconductor foundry market report. This market research report also lists 10 other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period.
Competitive vendor landscape
According to the research analysis, the global semiconductor foundry market is characterized by intense competition that exists between foundries, particularly during periods of overcapacity and inventory correction. The global semiconductor foundry market is highly competitive with the majority of the power in the hands of the top 4 firms. The top 10 firms collectively constitute almost 92% of the global semiconductor foundry market, and therefore they compete on various facets such as technological advances, time to market, optimal capacity use, and development of fabs to ramp up production. The industry competes with dedicated foundry service providers as well as with integrated device manufacturer (IDMs) and final product manufacturers, which have in-house manufacturing capacity or foundry operations.
“Vendors in the industry are competing in areas such as technical competence, time-to-market, research, production speed and cycle time, development quality, manufacturing yields, available capacity, customer service, and price. With the increasing need for miniaturization, firms are also increasing the competition based on the technology,” says Raghu Raj Singh, a lead analyst from Technavio for research on semiconductor equipment.
Technavio market research analysts identify the following key vendors:
TSMC
TSMC is one of the world’s first pure-play semiconductor foundries. The company’s prime offerings include high-end wafer production process technologies along with the provision of advanced manufacturing capabilities. It has been consistent in having a strong foothold in foundry-based business by creating sound partnerships with all types of customer bases. Its main customer segment includes IC suppliers.
GLOBALFOUNDRIES
GLOBALFOUNDRIES offers multiple advanced technological solutions, such as ASICs, different range of foundry-based solutions, and modular-based platforms, that serve a wide range of market segments including IoT, automotive, and industrial manufacturing. The company offers RF silicon-on-insulator and silicon germanium, which cater to the needs of aerospace, industrial manufacturing, automotive, test equipment usage, and communications.
UMC
UMC offers innovative technologies and manufacturing capabilities for the IC-based industries. The company performs through 10 wafer manufacturing foundries, including two high-end 300-mm fabs. UMC’s foundries are in Taiwan, China, and Singapore, which together produce 500 thousand wafers/month. The core competency of the company includes internal R&D capabilities.
SMIC
SMIC is one of the leading semiconductor foundries in the world that provides technology services and IC foundry on process nodes from 0.35 micron to 28 nm. In June 2016, SMIC commenced successful mass production of Qualcomm Snapdragon(TM) 425 processor in Beijing. In November 2016, SMIC acquired LFoundry and entered into the global automotive electronics market.
SAMSUNG
SAMSUNG caters to the wide requirements of the semiconductor manufacturers across the globe. SAMSUNG has developed an excellent chain of the partner ecosystem to support its foundry customers. These partners are allocated under each functional division that is meant to help in the manufacturing and designing of different sizes of wafers. In October 2016, Samsung announced that it had commenced the mass production of System-on-Chip products with its 10-nm FinFET technology.