Taipei, Aug. 7 (CNA) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC, 台積電) said Monday that Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., will not attend the Taiwanese chip maker's 30th anniversary celebration ceremony scheduled for Oct. 23.
TSMC said that the chip maker, which is believed to supply the A11 processor for the next-generation iPhones expected to be launched in September by Apple, had invited Cook to be a guest speaker at a technology summit, part of the upcoming anniversary celebration, but he cannot come due to tight schedule.
The guest list also includes Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of graphics integrated circuit designer NVIDIA Corp. and Steve Mollenkopf of smartphone IC designer Qualcomm.
Both NVIDIA and Qualcomm are heavyweight clients of TSMC.
TSMC said that the tech summit will be part of the anniversary celebration, while a concert of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 will also be performed.
Beethoven's Ninth is a favorite of TSMC Chairman Morris Chang (張忠謀), according to the world's largest contract chip maker.
TSMC was founded in 1987, creating a pure wafer foundry operation business model for the world's semiconductor industry. As a contract chip maker, TSMC receives orders from fabless IC designers and grows with its clients, the company said.
In 1987, TSMC's paid-in capital was only NT$1.38 billion (US$45.69 million), and after 30 years of development, its paid-in capital has soared to NT$259.30 billion. Due to the large capital size, TSMC is the most heavily weighted stock in the local equity market.
TSMC said that its first plant was a 6-inch wafer production site that was rented from the Ministry of Economic Affairs in its initial stage of operations. Now, the chipmaker owns three advanced 12-inch wafer plants, four eight-inch wafer plants, one 6-inch wafer plant, and two IC packaging and testing plants.
TSMC, which produced 10 million 12-inch equivalent wafers last year, accounts for a more-than 50 percent share of the global IC contract production market.
In 2016, TSMC posted a record high of NT$334.25 billion in net profit, with earnings per share of NT$12.89, and a new high of NT$947.94 billion in consolidated sales.
(By Jackson Chang and Frances Huang)
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