"Even by taking other global IDM's foundry division into consideration, for instance, Samsung and IBM, Taiwan's share in the global foundry market continues to be dominant at 66%," says MIC research team.

"Samsung has been aggressive in developing its foundry division, but being a supplier of components and mobile phones at the same time, the company is faced with competition with its own customers and the end-user and foundry divisions."

Looking at the technological development of leading Taiwanese foundries, TSMC has advanced 28/20/16nm processes that can meet customers' needs for high yields, homogeneity and diverse product lines and larger capacity.

TSMC's high-end process product lines deliver logic ICs, micro-component ICs, and analog ICs. But as tier-one customers start to deconcentrate their wafer manufacturing orders, TSMC needs to improve power consumption and mass production time of existing product lines; provide EDA (Electronic Design Automation) process for its own-developed innovation platform to strengthen partnerships with existing clients and continue to strengthen its foothold in the high-end foundry market.

In the future, TSMC is expected to prioritize the development of 3D ICs which are built on layers on a single semiconductor wafer. Hence, IDM manufacturers and foundries have enough competitive advantage to set foot into this area. IDM manufacturers possess system integration capabilities and therefore entering into 3D IC sector can help them establish their importance in the industrial chains.

Figure 1