“This rising trend of making APs in house will foremost benefit TSMC, the global leader in the semiconductor foundry business,” said Wu.

“In order to get the best performance out of their in-house APs, smartphone vendors will line up to use TSMC’s leading-edge 16nm technology to manufacture their chips. Their contracts with the foundry giant may even include the use of integrated fan-out wafer-level packaging (InFO WLP) technology.”

With the semiconductor market evolving rapidly, TSMC’s client base will continue to shift, from the initial customers such as AMD and NIVIDIA to AP leader Qualcomm and then to major smartphone vendors including Apple and Huawei during these two years, Wu added.