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.
Chizuko Kimura has become the first female sushi chef in the world to win a Michelin star, fulfilling a promise she made to her dying husband to continue his legacy. The 54-year-old Japanese chef regained the Michelin star her late husband, Shunei Kimura, won three years ago for their Sushi Shunei restaurant in Paris. For Shunei Kimura, the star was a dream come true. However, the joy was short-lived. He died from cancer just three months later in June 2022. He was 65. The following year, the restaurant in the heart of Montmartre lost its star rating. Chizuko Kimura insisted that the new star is still down
Application-specific integrated circuit designer Faraday Technology Corp (智原) yesterday said that although revenue this quarter would decline 30 percent from last quarter, it retained its full-year forecast of revenue growth of 100 percent. The company attributed the quarterly drop to a slowdown in customers’ production of chips using Faraday’s advanced packaging technology. The company is still confident about its revenue growth this year, given its strong “design-win” — or the projects it won to help customers design their chips, Faraday president Steve Wang (王國雍) told an online earnings conference. “The design-win this year is better than we expected. We believe we will win
Intel Corp chief executive officer Lip-Bu Tan (陳立武) is expected to meet with Taiwanese suppliers next month in conjunction with the opening of the Computex Taipei trade show, supply chain sources said on Monday. The visit, the first for Tan to Taiwan since assuming his new post last month, would be aimed at enhancing Intel’s ties with suppliers in Taiwan as he attempts to help turn around the struggling US chipmaker, the sources said. Tan is to hold a banquet to celebrate Intel’s 40-year presence in Taiwan before Computex opens on May 20 and invite dozens of Taiwanese suppliers to exchange views
While China’s leaders use their economic and political might to fight US President Donald Trump’s trade war “to the end,” its army of social media soldiers are embarking on a more humorous campaign online. Trump’s tariff blitz has seen Washington and Beijing impose eye-watering duties on imports from the other, fanning a standoff between the economic superpowers that has sparked global recession fears and sent markets into a tailspin. Trump says his policy is a response to years of being “ripped off” by other countries and aims to bring manufacturing to the US, forcing companies to employ US workers. However, China’s online warriors
RSS