The four foundries' capacity utilization will fall back in second-half 2022 but they can still expect higher revenues in the second half than in the first. Going into 2023, the Taiwan foundry industry is expected to see its revenues further grow by about 6% despite uncertainties over the global economy and inventory digestion.
In first-half 2022, although market demand for end devices including smartphones and notebooks fell weak, IC suppliers did not reduce their orders with foundries in haste. Having entered into long-term agreements (LTA) and made advanced payments, they chose to reallocate their foundry orders to automotive and networking chips, which allowed the Taiwan-based foundries to still maintain full capacity utilization.
In second-half 2022, new product launches by Apple, AMD and MediaTek on top of increasing orders from Qualcomm, Nvidia and TSMC will fuel further growth in TSMC's revenues, allowing the Taiwan foundry industry to achieve higher second-half 2022 revenues than in the first.
Table 1: Key factors affecting Taiwan's wafer foundry industry in 1H22, 2H22 (demand and supply)
Table 2: End product shipments and their influences on chip demand, 1H22 and 2H22
Table 3: Key factors affecting Taiwan's wafer foundry industry in 2023 (demand and supply)
Chart 1: Taiwan key wafer foundry revenues, 4Q21-4Q22 (US$b)
Chart 5: Taiwan key wafer foundry annual revenues, 2019-2023 (US$b)
