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Market Cap 100: ASE keeps deepening advanced packaging solution development

Staff reporter, Taipei; Steve Shen, DIGITIMES Asia 0

Credit: DIGITIMES

Taiwan-based ASE Technology Holding (ASEH) ranked 72 in the "2023 Asia Supply Chain Market Cap 100 Ranking," representing a significant improvement from the 81 it held a year earlier.

Read more about Asia Supply Chain Market Cap 100 Ranking

As of November 2022, the ASEH group, which includes Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE) and Silicon Precision Industries (SPIL), garnered revenue of NT$617.734 billion (US$20.385 billion), increasing 21.05% from a year earlier.

Based on its performance, it is estimated that ASEH's revenue for December and the fourth quarter of 2022 will continue to enjoy a double-digit percentage growth.

According to a semiconductor industry estimate, the world's top five OSAT (outsourced semiconductor assembly and testing) providers in order are ASE, Amkor, JECT Group, SPIL, and Powertech Technology (PTI), with ASE accounting for the largest market share of over 35%.

Due to its vast capacity for wire-bonding packaging, high-end testing, and midrange-to-high-end flip-chip (FC) packaging, ASEH has garnered priority support from related suppliers, including testing interface providers, test socket vendors and other peripheral component makers.

ASEH and its subsidiaries have continued to deepen their development of related SiP packaging technology to address the rising production cost for fabricating SoCs with advanced process nodes with heterogeneous integration.

The group has directly or indirectly cut into Apple's supply chains and is the primary packaging partner for many first-tier chipmakers, including AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom and MediaTek.

ASEH has also landed more windfall automotive chip orders from international IDMs since 2022 amid an economic downturn. Although the packaging market for automotive chips is smaller than that of IT and consumer electronics, backend service demand from the automotive semiconductor sector has been growing steadily.

For 2023, ASEH will continue to push forward the development of advanced packaging solutions and enhance the capabilities of its VIPack platform family products. The platform product covers its fan-out packaging, co-packaged optics (CPO), 2.5D/3D IC packaging, and advanced redistribution layer (RDL)-based FOCoS family products, such as FOCoS-CL and FOCoS-CF.

Based on its solid technology foundation and the support from the first-tier chipmakers, ASEH and its subsidiary SPIL are confident that they will continue to strive in the ever-expanding IC backend service market, despite increasing competition from Chinese rivals, including Tianshui Huatain Technology (TSHT), Tongfu Microelectronics and JECT Group.

In response to increasing market uncertainty arising from the relocation of supply chains and the ongoing trade conflict between the US and China, ASEH has deepened its deployment in Southeast Asia, including expanding its presence in Malaysia, while accelerating its investment in Taiwan.

ASEH is expected to see its sales stay flat in the first quarter of 2023 before gaining momentum quarter-on-quarter in the rest of the year. Its annual revenue for 2023 will likely be on the same level as that or increase slightly from a year earlier.