TSMC and UMC investment model in China

• Main Authors: Yi-Yen Lin, 林宜彥
• Other Authors: Sheng-Ji Liu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/20889562313780489991

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 中國大陸研究所碩士班 === 98 === TSMC is the first dedicated foundry in the world. In the global foundry business, Taiwan''s annual production nowadays is more than 60% which is also the no.1 capacity and market share. Among them, TSMC and UMC are the top-two leaders while the first-place player TSMC''s market share is more than 40%. Having introducing its economic reform in 1978, Mainland China gradually rose and became the world factory today, thereby attracting many international semiconductor companies to build factories in mainland China. The investment strategy of TSMC and UMC is another case. In investing in Mainland China, the timing of Taiwan''s semiconductor manufacturers was relatively late and most of them used a joint venture model or other model. For example, SMIC, introduced the first 8-inch wafer fab in China''s semiconductor industry in 2001, has also developed 12-inch wafer fab for production. Later, TSMC and UMC also set up factories in Mainland China. Today, UMC’s friendly business Hejian Corporation has an 8-inch wafer fab in Suzhou. In 2005, the case of Hejian was officially investigated by Taiwan government. In 2007, Taiwan government officially permitted TSMC to establish its 8-inch Songjiang wafer factory in Shanghai. Both TSMC and UMC are the world''s leading companies, but their investment strategy represent different perpectives. In 2009, a new foundry company Globalfoundries was formed by a large consortium of a Middle Eastern capital in conjunction with the start-of-the-art technologies from American IBM and AMD. This new entrant quickly occupied the fifth position. After the acquisition of Singaporean Chartered Semiconductor, Globalfoundries moved up to the third place and the market share between it and the world’s second-place UMC was much closer. Besides, Globalfoundries announced that its biggest competitor was TSMC. The lawsuit between TSMC and SMIC Semiconductor was settled down in 2010. On this, SMIC had to pay TSMC a big cost. TSMC may take a large share in the Chinese biggest foundry SMIC. In 2009, the UMC’s Hejian lawsuit was found innocent in the second trial. In March 2010, Board of Directors of UMC decided to take Hejian if Taiwan government can allow such a purchase deal. The backgrounds of this thesis study are the global IC industry development and the development of the semiconductor industry between Taiwan and China. This thesis used the development strategy of TSMC and UMC as a case study to investigate the reason of local IC makers setting up wafer foundries in Mainland China, the policy advantages and disadvantages included. Besides, sudden changes after 2009 – the loss of the second lawsuit of SMIC to TSMC, the Hejian case, Globalfoundries’s appearance, etc., are all covered in this study.