Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s top contract chipmaker, yesterday said it planned to raise its spending on research and development by nearly 39 percent to NT$50 billion (US$1.63 billion) next year, as part of efforts to fend off growing competition from its peers.
This year, TSMC budgeted NT$36 billion for research and development spending, company chairman and chief executive Morris Chang (張忠謀) said in his speech at an event arranged by local think tank the Chung-hua Institute for Economic Research (中華經濟研究院).
“In the last five years, TSMC has seen a threat from overseas [companies],” said Chang, who founded TSMC in 1987. “TSMC has grown to be a company that is 10-fold, or even 20-fold bigger than the one I imagined back in 1985.”
“We think technology is the most important [factor behind this success],” Chang added.
Earlier this year, Chang said it was the firm’s mission to become a major chip technology and capacity provider to the global chip industry in the years to come.
TSMC is one of the world’s top three semiconductor companies in terms of technological capability, along with US chip giant Intel Corp and South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co, Chang said.
Presently, TSMC is not in direct competition with Intel and Samsung, Chang said.
“Intel is the semiconductor industry’s Mercedes-Benz, while TSMC is a Toyota,” Chang said, using the automobile industry as a metaphor.
However, in the next 20 years, “we will be rivals,” Chang said, adding that the growing popularity of affordable netbooks and smartphones is a trend that favored TSMC.
Intel and Samsung are makers of logic chips and memory chips, but in recent years they have expanded into the field of contract chip manufacturing, which is TSMC’s main market.
Commenting on the upward trend of the New Taiwan dollar against the US dollar, Chang said “for TSMC, it is an issue.”
TSMC’s gross margin would fall to between 48 percent and 50 percent this quarter, from 50 percent in the third quarter, if the NT dollar rose to NT$30.6 against the US dollar, the chipmaker said in October.
Chang expects a gradual appreciation of the local currency against the greenback, judging from the central bank’s recent intervention in the currency market, he said.
HANDOVER POLICY: Approving the probe means that the new US administration of Donald Trump is likely to have the option to impose trade restrictions on China US President Joe Biden’s administration is set to initiate a trade investigation into Chinese semiconductors in the coming days as part of a push to reduce reliance on a technology that US officials believe poses national security risks. The probe could result in tariffs or other measures to restrict imports on older-model semiconductors and the products containing them, including medical devices, vehicles, smartphones and weaponry, people familiar with the matter said. The investigation examining so-called foundational chips could take months to conclude, meaning that any reaction to the findings would be left to the discretion of US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming team. Biden
INVESTMENT: Jun Seki, chief strategy officer for Hon Hai’s EV arm, and his team are currently in talks in France with Renault, Nissan’s 36 percent shareholder Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), the iPhone maker known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團) internationally, is in talks with Nissan Motor Co’s biggest shareholder Renault SA about its willingness to sell its shares in the Japanese automaker, the Central News Agency (CNA) said, citing people it did not identify. Nissan and fellow Japanese automaker, Honda Motor Co, are exploring a merger that would create a rival to Toyota Motor Corp in Japan and better position the combined company to face competitive challenges around the world, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday. However, one potential spanner in the works is
SEMICONDUCTORS: Samsung and Texas Instruments would receive US$4.75 billion and US$1.6 billion respectively to build one chip factory in Utah and two in Texas Samsung Electronics Co and Texas Instruments Inc completed final agreements to get billions of US dollars of government support for new semiconductor plants in the US, cementing a major piece of US President Joe Biden administration’s CHIPS and Science Act initiative. Under binding agreements unveiled Friday, Samsung would get as much as US$4.75 billion in funding, while Texas Instruments stands to receive US$1.6 billion — money that would help them build facilities in Texas and Utah. The final deals mean the chipmakers can begin collecting the funding when their projects hit certain benchmarks. Though the terms of Texas Instruments’ final agreement is
Call it an antidote to fast fashion: Japanese jeans hand-dyed with natural indigo and weaved on a clackety vintage loom, then sold at a premium to global denim connoisseurs. Unlike their mass-produced cousins, the tough garments crafted at the small Momotaro Jeans factory in southwest Japan are designed to be worn for decades, and come with a lifetime repair warranty. On site, Yoshiharu Okamoto gently dips cotton strings into a tub of deep blue liquid, which stains his hands and nails as he repeats the process. The cotton is imported from Zimbabwe, but the natural indigo they use is harvested in Japan —
RSS