Already there have been reports that TSMC could increase prices of their wafers next year and by up to 20% for mature process and up to 8% for advanced process. However, it is being reported by Liberty Times Net that for TSMC’s largest customer Apple, the Taiwan giant could increase quotes marginally by only 3%.
Whereas some of its other important clients like AMD, which enjoy VIP-grade treatment, will have to pay 5% more. However, TSMC has not commented on the market rumours, but the price hike will not be limited to TSMC only.
Samsung and Key Foundry are planning to increase prices of their foundry services by 15 to 20% according to TheElec. It is even believed that some customers have already approved the increased prices and have signed the contracts with Samsung.
Obviously, the rate of price increase will solely depend on the customer’s wafer order volume as well as the kind of chip it demands and the contract duration. Currently major players like NVIDIA, Qualcomm and others are using Samsung process nodes for their cutting edge products.
Another Taiwan foundry giant, UMC, which is the fourth major contract manufacturer, has already raised its prices by 30% twice this year alone. Not only that, even Taiwan’s PSMC and China’s biggest semiconductor maker SMIC and the US giant GlobalFoundries ahve also increased their prices during Q3 of this year.
So, all in all even though Apple seems unaffected of these price hikes for now, however, these fabless companies are forced to use wafers by their foundries. Whereas foundries are opportunizing this to make more profits to expand their productions like what TSMC is doing.
