Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said it has no concrete plans to build a second plant in Japan.
TSMC’s comments came after Cliff Hou (侯永清), the company’s senior vice president of Europe and Asia sales and corporate research, said in a recent interview with Tokyo TV’s World Business Satellite that his company would not rule out building a second plant in Kumamoto Prefecture.
TSMC has started construction of a fab in the prefecture.
Photo: Bloomberg
TSMC needs to have a good understanding of how well the first fab in Kumamoto performs before making a decision on a second facility in the prefecture, Hou said.
The company yesterday said it has no concrete plans for new investments in Japan, but added that it has not ruled out the possibility of building a second fab in the country.
Japanese Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry Yasutoshi Nishimura said a second fab by TSMC would be very welcome in Japan, adding that the government would do its best to attract foreign semiconductor suppliers to invest in the country.
In November last year, TSMC announced that it would spend up to US$2.12 billion to set up a majority-owned foundry services provider in Kumamoto, with Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corp taking a stake of up to 20 percent.
After the joint venture — Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Inc — was set up, TSMC broke ground on the plant in Kumamoto in April, with mass production scheduled to start by the end of 2024.
In related news, TSMC yesterday reported that sales last month rose 50 percent, despite slumping consumer electronics demand and COVID-19 disruptions in China.
The company reported revenue of NT$222.7 billion (US$7.3 billion), adding to a long streak of increasing sales that was supercharged by a spike in demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company is also the exclusive supplier of Apple Inc’s silicon chips for iPhones and Macs.
TSMC shares are down more than 20 percent this year after more than doubling during the pandemic.
The global economic slowdown has diminished consumer demand for many products that use TSMC chips, but the company and its customers still expect the long-term trend in electronics demand to keep going up.
TSMC has committed to spending about US$36 billion in capital expenditure this year.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
OPEN SCIENCE: International collaboration on math and science will persevere even if the incoming Trump administration imposes strict controls, Nvidia’s CEO said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said on Saturday that global cooperation in technology would continue even if the incoming US administration imposes stricter export controls on advanced computing products. US president-elect Donald Trump, in his first term in office, imposed restrictions on the sale of US technology to China citing national security — a policy continued under US President Joe Biden. The curbs forced Nvidia, the world’s leading maker of chips used for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, to change its product lineup in China. The US chipmaking giant last week reported record-high quarterly revenue on the back of strong AI chip