The sales gap between Samsung Electronics' institutional sector (semiconductors) and TSMC continues to widen. The two companies are direct competitors in the global foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) market.
According to industry sources on the 11th, Samsung Electronics' institutional sector reported sales of 25.1 trillion won for the first quarter of this year. This represents a 9% increase compared to the same period last year, but a decrease of 17% compared to the previous quarter. Sales of high-bandwidth memory (HBM) used in artificial intelligence (AI) chips decreased due to the impact of semiconductor export controls. Samsung Electronics explained that “the performance was weak due to seasonal demand weakness in major applications such as mobile, customer inventory adjustments, and stagnant utilization rates” in its foundry business.
However, TSMC, the world's largest foundry corporation, recorded first-quarter sales of 839.35 billion New Taiwan dollars (about 37 trillion won), a 42% increase compared to the same period last year. Even considering recent exchange rate fluctuations, the sales gap between Samsung Electronics and TSMC exceeds 10 trillion won based on the Korean won.
Samsung Electronics rose to the top of the global semiconductor sales rankings in 2021, overtaking Intel. However, after beginning to face a slowdown in the memory market in the third quarter of 2022, it allowed TSMC to surpass its sales. Last year, the sales of the two companies were similar at around 28 trillion won in the second quarter. However, starting from the third quarter, the sales gap began to widen to about 3 trillion won, and by the fourth quarter, the difference reached 8 trillion won.
Samsung Electronics is a comprehensive semiconductor company (IDM) that has entered all areas of the semiconductor industry, including memory, non-memory (system semiconductors responsible for computation, logic, reasoning, and information processing), and foundry. In contrast, TSMC mainly operates in the foundry sector.
The capability to respond to HBM, which has emerged as the core of AI semiconductors, is noted as a reason for the revenue scale difference between the two companies. Samsung Electronics, a latecomer in HBM, has not yet entered the supply chain led by NVIDIA in the AI semiconductor ecosystem. In contrast, TSMC has effectively monopolized the production of NVIDIA’s AI chips, achieving performance improvements. TSMC has projected its second-quarter sales forecast to range between $28.4 billion and $29.2 billion, approximately 39 trillion to 40 trillion won, which is about 10 trillion won higher than Samsung Electronics' second-quarter sales forecast.