SMIC Rose to Third-Largest Foundry Worldwide in Q1 2024
TapTechNews May 24th news, according to the May 22nd report of research institute Counterpoint, SMIC rose to the world's third-largest foundry in the first quarter of 2024, behind only TSMC and Samsung, with a market share of 6%.
The report said that the revenue of the global foundry industry in the first quarter of 2024 decreased by about 5% quarter-on-quarter, but increased by 12% year-on-year. The quarter-on-quarter decline in industry revenue in the first quarter is not only due to seasonal effects, but also affected by the slow recovery of non-AI semiconductor demand such as smartphones, consumer electronics, the Internet of Things, automotive and industrial applications.
TSMC's first-quarter results slightly exceeded market expectations, with a share of 62%. The company raised its forecast for data center AI revenue and expects it to more than double year-on-year in 2024. In addition, TSMC also extended the 50% compound annual growth rate guideline for AI revenue to 2028, indicating that the AI demand momentum remains strong. Despite the expected more than doubling of CoWoS capacity by the end of 2024, it still cannot meet the strong AI demand of customers. It is worth noting that due to the strong demand for AI accelerators, TSMC's 5nm capacity utilization remains strong.
Samsung Foundry's revenue decline was mainly due to seasonal factors in smartphones, maintaining the second position with a 13% market share in the first quarter of 2024. The company expects that as the demand improves in the second quarter of 2024, the revenue will rebound with double-digit growth.
As the demand for domestic applications and other demands begin to recover, SMIC's quarterly results exceeded market expectations, and the market share of foundry revenue in the first quarter of 2024 firmly ranked third for the first time, with a market share of 6%. SMIC expects to continue to grow in the second quarter as the scope of inventory replenishment expands.
UMC and GlobalFoundries both said that consumer and smart phone demand has bottomed out. However, automotive demand remains mixed, with UMC expecting a slowdown in automotive demand in the short term, while GlobalFoundries expects an upward trend in revenue in the second quarter of 2024.
After the end of the first quarter of 2024, the sprouts of demand recovery have begun to be observed. After several quarters of destocking, channel inventory tends to be normalized and streamlined. The report still believes that the strong demand for AI and the modest recovery of terminal demand will be the main growth drivers of the industry in 2024.
TapTechNews noted that SMIC's Q1 2024 revenue was 1.75 billion US dollars (currently about 12.688 billion yuan), compared with 1.462 billion US dollars in the same period last year, an increase of 19.7% year-on-year and 4.3% quarter-on-quarter. This is the first time that SMIC's quarterly revenue has exceeded that of the two major chipmakers UMC and GlobalFoundries, and it has temporarily become the world's second largest pure foundry after TSMC.