TSMC Captured 70% of the Global Market Last Year, Widening the Gap with Samsung
Foundry business revenue is expected to exceed $169.5 billion this year. (Photo: BusinessKorea DB)
Forecasts suggest that foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) revenue could exceed $169.5 billion this year, driven by the expansion of in-house chip development by global Big Tech and artificial intelligence (AI) startups. Taiwan’s TSMC, the undisputed leader in the foundry sector, reportedly captured 70% of the global foundry market last year, further widening its gap with second-place Samsung Electronics.
According to market research firm TrendForce on March 20, the total annual revenue of the top 10 companies in the global foundry market last year amounted to $169.5 billion. This figure represents a 26.3% increase from the previous year, an all-time high for the industry. TrendForce explained, “Due to factors such as supply shortages of Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) for AI servers and Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), demand for advanced processes remained strong in the fourth quarter of last year,” adding, “Additionally, new smartphone launches increased wafer orders for mobile Application Processors (APs), supporting stable shipment performance.”
TSMC’s revenue last year reached $122.54 billion (a 69.9% market share), a 36.1% increase compared to previous year. Samsung Electronics recorded a revenue of $12.63 billion and a market share of 7.2%. These figures represent a decrease of 3.9% and 2.2 percentage points, respectively, from the previous year. The market share gap between TSMC and Samsung Electronics widened further, from 55 percentage points in 2024 to 62.7 percentage points last year. The revenue of third-place SMIC of China increased by 16.2% year-on-year to $9.327 billion, but its market share during the same period fell by 0.38 percentage points to 5.32%.
TrendForce projected that global foundry revenue will increase by 24.8% year-on-year to approximately $218.8 billion. It forecast that TSMC will record a growth rate of around 32%. The research firm stated, “Demand for advanced processes will be led by AI GPUs from companies like Nvidia and AMD,” and “North American CSPs such as Google, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Meta, as well as AI startups like OpenAI and Groq, are also accelerating the development of their own AI chips.” It added in its analysis, “A significant number of these are expected to enter mass production and begin shipments this year, which will act as a key demand driver for advanced processes of 4/5-nanometer (nm, 1 nanometer is one-billionth of a meter) and below.
Kim Eun-jin
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