In the global foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) market, Taiwan's TSMC maintained its solo lead last year with a market share approaching 70%. Samsung Electronics saw both revenue and market share decline, widening the gap between the two companies.
According to market research firm TrendForce on the 12th, the annual revenue of the world's top 10 foundry corporations last year totaled $169.5 billion (about 250 trillion won). That was up 26.3% from the previous year, the largest ever for the industry.
TrendForce said, "Due to shortages of graphics processing units (GPUs) for artificial intelligence (AI) servers and Google TPUs, demand for advanced process nodes remained strong in the fourth quarter of last year," and noted, "In addition, new smartphone launches drove more wafer orders for mobile application processors (APs), supporting steady shipments."
TSMC, the industry leader, posted $122.54 billion in revenue last year, capturing a 69.9% share. Revenue rose 36.1% from a year earlier, the highest growth rate among major players.
No. 2 Samsung Electronics recorded annual revenue of $12.63 billion and a market share of 7.2%. Those figures were down 3.9% and 2.2 percentage points, respectively, from a year earlier.
In contrast, on a fourth-quarter basis last year, revenue rose 6.7% from the previous quarter and market share increased by 0.3 percentage points. TrendForce said shipments of new 2-nanometer products and production of logic dies used in Samsung HBM4 (6th generation) supported revenue.
The annual market share gap between TSMC and Samsung Electronics widened from 55 percentage points in 2024 to 62.7 percentage points last year.
No. 3 China's SMIC recorded revenue of $9.327 billion, up 16.2% from the previous year, but its market share fell 0.38 percentage points over the same period to 5.32%.
TrendForce projected, "This year, rising memory prices could dampen demand for major finished goods, increasing uncertainty over orders and fab (factory) utilization in the second half."