TSMC pure-play foundry market share set to hit 66% in 2025

Taipei, Dec. 14 (CNA) Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s (TSMC) share of the pure-play foundry market is forecast to increase from 64 to 66 percent in 2025, according to the U.S.-based market information advisory firm International Data Corp. (IDC).

The global IC market is set to grow by 15 percent in 2025 due to the strong demand for artificial intelligence applications and high-performance computing, IDC said in a research report on Thursday.

In 2023, TSMC's market share stood at 59 percent in this so-called Foundry 1.0 market, IDC said.

TSMC also took a leading 28 percent share in 2023 of the Foundry 2.0 market, which includes traditional pure-play wafer foundry operations, nonmemory integrated device manufacturing, packaging and testing, and photomask manufacturing, IDC added.

IDC said that TSMC is expected to see its share in the Foundry 2.0 market grow rapidly in 2024 and 2025 due to increased demand driven by AI development.

According to IDC, TSMC and rivals Samsung and Intel Corp. are all scheduled to start mass production of chips made on the advanced 2 nanometer process in 2025.

IDC said wafer production is expected to grow 7 percent in 2025 with production of advanced processes expected to grow 12 percent.

The average capacity utilization rate of sophisticated processes is also forecast to top 90 percent, IDC added.

IDC said that the average capacity utilization rate in 8-inch wafer fabs in the mature process is expected to grow to 75 percent in 2025 from 70 percent in 2024, and the average utilization rate of 12-inch wafer plants is expected to top 76 percent next year.

In the advanced IC packaging services segment, TSMC is expected to ride the waves of strong demand from AI chip designer Nvidia Corp. and cloud-based services providers and see its production of the 3D Chip-on-Wafer-on-Substrate (CoWoS) IC packaging services double from 330,000 units expected in 2024 to hit 660,000 units in 2025, IDC added.

According to IDC, the memory chip segment is expected to grow more than 24 percent from a year earlier in 2025, largely boosted by the increasing penetration of high-end products such as high bandwidth memory 3 (HBM3) and HBM3e, which are required for AI accelerators, as well as the new generation of HBM4, which is expected to be unveiled in the second half of 2025.

In the IC design segment, IDC said, the market is expected to grow 15 percent in the Asia Pacific region as demand grows with inventory levels stabilizing, personal devices demand picking up, and AI computing extending to a wide range of applications, IDC said.