Chip Champ TSMC: Cynosure of All Eyes, Apple of Apple’s Eye

[ABS News Service/15.02.2022]

Located on the northwest coast of Taiwan, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) does something extremely crucial that breathes life into some of the world’s most used devices including phones, laptops, cars, watches, and refrigerators. It manufactures semiconductor chips for leading brands including Apple, Intel, Qualcomm, AMD, and Nvidia. The $550 billion firm is the largest chip contractor in the world, controlling more than half of the world’s made-to-order chips market. When TSMC will get its new fabrication plant ready, spread across 22 football fields of land in southern Taiwan to produce market-disruptive 3-nm chips, U.S. firms like Intel and Global Foundries will be left far behind in the chip race. Even China, which has pumped billions to fix the semiconductor quandary, is nowhere in the picture.

There is another key trigger to the TSMC triumph, which is Apple. Ever since the giant phone maker has severed its ties with Samsung, it has become TSMC’s biggest client. TSMC goes out of the way to keep pace with Apple’s aggressive iPhone iterations. Rather than combining new technologies to double power every two years, it makes baby step advances each year. This strategy, which goes against the Moore’s law, has reaped rich dividends for TSMC, while ensuring Apple launch events continue to create the customary Apple waves.

The otherwise low-profile TSMC hit the headlines in the context of the ongoing chip shortage which has impacted as many as 169 industries including auto, steel, ready-mix concrete, air-conditioning units, and breweries. China’s auto information exchange and market research platform CPCA has openly advised TSMC to improve its supply chain transparency.

In a retort, TSMC has stated that it is actually lending active support to resolve the chip crisis, and since the number of chips sent to the factory is more than that used in products, it is a clear case of ‘someone’ in the car supply chain hoarding the chips

The global chip crisis is thus yet shrouded in mystery, and TSMC’s home country of Taiwan adds a geopolitical angle to it, given that it is at the heart of the legendary US-China battle for supremacy