TSMC Dominates Global Foundry Market as Samsung Falls Behind
A market research report from TrendForce shows that last year the global contract semiconductor foundry market remained led by Taiwan’s TSMC, which approached a 70% share. Samsung Electronics, by contrast, saw declines in both revenue and market share, widening the gap between the two leaders.
TrendForce tallies the top 10 foundry players' combined annual revenue at about $169.5 billion for the year, up 26.3% from the previous year, a new industry high. The firm attributes much of the demand to AI-related needs, noting ongoing shortages of GPUs for AI servers and of Google’s TPUs, which supported demand for advanced manufacturing processes. A pickup in wafer orders for mobile applications tied to new smartphone launches also helped.
For the full year, TSMC posted about $122.54 billion in revenue, capturing a 69.9% share of the market, up 36.1% from the prior year—the strongest YoY gain among the top players.
Samsung Electronics accounted for about $12.63 billion in annual foundry sales, roughly 7.2% of the market, down from the previous year by 3.9% in revenue and 2.2 percentage points in market share. In the fourth quarter, Samsung’s quarterly results did improve, with revenue rising 6.7% from the prior quarter and market share increasing by 0.3 percentage point. TrendForce notes that shipments of new 2-nanometer products and logic dies used in Samsung’s HBM4 (sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory) supported that quarterly uptick.
The gap between TSMC and Samsung widened again: the annual spread in market share grew to about 62.7 percentage points, up from about 55 points in 2024. China’s SMIC ranked third, with annual revenue of $932.7 million and a 5.32% share, up 16.2% year over year but down 0.38 percentage points from the prior period.
TrendForce cautions that price trends in memory chips could weigh on overall finished-device demand, potentially reducing orders in the second half and adding uncertainty to wafer and fab utilization. The finding underscores ongoing concentration in leading-edge manufacturing among a small number of players.
Why this matters for the United States: TSMC’s dominance in cutting-edge nodes means U.S. chip design and tech sectors—numerous AI accelerators, data-center processors, and consumer electronics—are highly dependent on a single external supplier for the most advanced processes. Policymakers and industry observers watch how this concentration affects supply resilience, pricing, and national security considerations. Additionally, any shift in memory pricing can influence the cost and availability of U.S.-made devices and data-center hardware. For U.S. companies, the trends highlight the importance of diversified supply chains, potential incentives for domestic production, and the broader competition over global semiconductor leadership. Context: TrendForce specializes in semiconductor market analytics; TSMC is headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan; Samsung Electronics operates the world’s largest memory and a major contract chip production business; SMIC is China’s largest contract foundry.