Technology / Semiconductor / Top foundries 0 comments

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The pure-play IC foundry market is forecast to surge >20% in 2006 as compared to worldwide IC industry growth of 8% (such high growth is a key reason Samsung has decided to enter the foundry market). The general definition for a pure-play foundry is a company that does not offer a significant amount of IC products of its own design, but instead focuses on producing ICs for other companies.

The top 10 pure-play foundries for 2006 below is a forecast by IC Insights. Note that nine of the top 10 pure-play foundry companies listed are based in the Asia-Pacific region.

(Anyone who has links to information on the top wafer and testing & assembly service providers, please drop me a mail or a comment to this article)

But it is important to note that most IDMs (integrated device manufacturers, like Samsung, Texas Instruments etc) have their own in-house wafer manufacturing capabilities, so the foundries must be either able to operate more efficiently/cheaply and/or be a provider of spare capacity during a period of capacity tightness, otherwise there is no point outsourcing production to them. The former is a long-term competitive advantage, the latter is a cyclical phenomenon.

Below is a self-generated table of overall semicon industry players, amalgamating IDMs with foundry capabilities together with pure-play foundries to give a perspective. Note that total revenue includes their IDM components, so their actual foundry contributions will be substantially less.... Nevertheless:

No.	Company	2005 revenue (US$M)
1	Samsung	17800
2	Texas Instruments	11300
3	TSMC	8130
4	Sony	5800
5	IBM Microelectronics	3500
6	Fujitsu	3400
7	UMC	3200
8	Sharp	2800
9	Elpida Memory	1900
10	Fairchild Semiconductor	1400

References:
(1) IC Insights Aug 2006: Top 10 Pure-Play Foundries Forecast for 2006
(2) My-ESM: Top 50 Semicon Companies