SAN FRANCISCO — Executives from South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. told the Reuters news service that the company has plans to triple its market share in the semiconductor foundry business and has its eyes set on the No. 2 position in that market, behind dominant player Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC).
Samsung (Seoul) earlier this year split is foundry operations from the rest of its System LSI division in a move designed to give the unit more independence and grow its market share. One knock against Samsung's foundry business has been from the start that Samsung, as a chip maker, is also a competitor to many foundry customers.
A Monday (July 24) report by Reuters quotes E.S. Jung, head of Samsung's foundry division, saying that Samsung plans to grow its foundry market share to 25 percent from less than 10 percent today. To do this, Samsung will aggressively add customers, according to the report.
Samsung, which is likely to pass Intel Corp. to become No. 1 in global semiconductor sales this year due to a booming memory chip market, is a technology leader in the chip manufacturing space. But in the foundry business, Samsung trails TSMC by a wide margin.
TSMC held 59 percent market share in the pure-play foundry market for 2016, a number that has been relatively consistent in recent years, according to market research firm IC Insights. TSMC's market share in the overall foundry market — which includes integrated device manufacturers like Samsung, Intel and others — is still greater than 50 percent.
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