TSMC Expects 5G to Be 'Megatrend'
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. expects 2021 global smartphone shipments to increase 10% year on year and 5G handsets to take 35% market share this year, up from 18% in 2020, said CEO C.C. Wei on a Q4 earnings call Thursday.…
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TSMC is a major components supplier to the iPhone 12. The “silicon content” of 5G smartphones will continue to increase compared with their 4G counterparts, said Wei. “We continue to expect faster penetration of 5G smartphones” compared with 4G penetration rates historically, as 5G handsets “benefit from the significant performance” upgrade to drive more artificial intelligence applications and “more cloud services,” he said. TSMC views 5G as a “multiyear megatrend that will enable a world where digital computation is increasingly ubiquitous.” That’s expected, he said, to “fuel the growth” long-term of all four of TSMC’s business “platforms” -- smartphones, high-performance computing (HPC), automotive and IoT. “As we enter the 5G era, a smarter and more intelligent world will require massive increases in computation power and greater need for energy-efficient computing, and therefore, require leading-edge technologies.” TSMC is looking to HPC as an “increasingly important driver” of the company’s “incremental revenue growth,” he said.