The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has released its January revenue, signalling a solid start to the year, which analysts expect will include a semiconductor inventory correction.
In addition, a new report from Nikkei says that ZTE Corporation, a Chinese telecommunications company previously sanctioned by the US government for doing business with Iran, is covertly designing its products on one of TSMC’s most advanced chipmaking processes.
The latter piece of information comes after the United States barred Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, a Chinese consumer electronics and technology business, from utilizing similar technologies due to the company’s strong ties to the Chinese military.
According to TSMC’s revenue figures, the business had its best month in terms of dollar amounts and growth rates in the first month of this year. It indicates that the world’s largest contract chip producer, the Taiwanese fab, earned a massive NT$172 billion in January, representing a significant 35.8% increase.
Some of the world’s leading technology companies are among TSMC’s clients. Apple Inc., based in Cupertino, California, Qualcomm Incorporated and Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., both based in San Diego, and NVIDIA Corporation, based in Santa Clara, are among them. TSMC’s improvements in semiconductor production techniques, referred to in the industry as “nodes,” have made it the backbone of market advancements over the years.
The revenue for January 2022 represents a significant increase above previous years’ figures. For example, TSMC brought in NT$126 billion in sales in January 2021, the first month of the fiscal year following the large-scale interruptions ushered in by the continuing pandemic, representing a 22.2 percent annual growth rate.
This development comes as the company continues to benefit from capacity expansion and increased prices, the latter owing to chip shortages in the sector as a result of the pandemic-induced demand surge.
With TSMC’s business flourishing, Nikkei believes that ZTE, a Chinese telecoms company, is discreetly establishing a technological edge in the fifth-generation (5G) cellular connectivity base station market. Telecommunications carriers employ these stations to meet consumer needs, and according to the newspaper, ZTE’s equipment is built on the 7-nanometer (nm) manufacturing node.
It also points out that Huawei’s inability to do business with TSMC as a result of US sanctions has left the field wide open for ZTE. The server and base station segments are expected to increase by double digits, and the company is also interested in TSMC’s leading-edge chip node, which is the company’s 5nm process.
While ZTE may not be able to get the latest semiconductor technologies from TSMC, it is still unable to sell its 5G base stations to some Western corporations. As a result, it is concentrating its efforts mostly on China, while the United States will rely on Qualcomm Incorporated’s small cell 5G Open RAN technology developed on the 4nm node.
TSMC also offers 4nm-based products, which are a design extension of the company’s 5nm process families. From the second half of this year until the first half of 2023, various process technologies marketed under the 4nm moniker are projected to begin production.
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