The schedule of TSMC's US plant was delayed; Memory weakness is worsening; 81% of semiconductor companies expect revenue growth this year

⏵ The progress of the TSMC US plant has been delayed, and the delivery of the Zhongke 2 Nanometer Plant has been further delayed

          According to a semiconductor equipment supply chain source, the overall construction and equipment installation progress of TSMC's new wafer factory in Arizona, US, has been delayed, according to Jiwei.com. It is reported that from the current engineering and equipment installation progress, it is unlikely that TSMC's new US wafer factory will be fully put into operation in 2024, and may be postponed to 2025.
In addition, due to the lack of approval for the second phase expansion of the China Science and Technology Taichung Park for the construction of the TSMC 2 Nanometer Factory, on March 13, it was announced again that the development schedule would be postponed. It is expected to complete the land acquisition and related planning procedures in October. After the land is delivered in November, public works and manufacturers will start construction simultaneously, affecting the layout progress of the next generation advanced manufacturing process of TSMC.

⏵ Samsung's strong attack on 4nm, grabbing the power of a single unit

        South Korean media have revealed that Samsung is rapidly catching up with the advanced wafer foundry process, and will start mass production of the third generation 4nm process in the first half of this year, with improvements in efficiency, power consumption, and chip area reduction. This will win orders from major customers of TSMC such as Qualcomm, AMD, and Nvidia, setting off a new wave of order grabbing battles with TSMC.

⏵ Due to the decline in demand from China and the United States, the revenue of major IT factories in Taiwan has shrunk, hitting a new low in two years

        Major enterprises in Taiwan, which supply a large number of products and semiconductors to customers such as Apple and Microsoft, have seen a sharp downturn in their performance, mainly due to the decline in demand for products such as PCs and smartphones centered in the United States and China, and it is currently impossible to predict when demand will recover. In February 2023, the total revenue of the 19 major IT factories in Taiwan that were listed as "Asia 300" constituent stocks was NT $17.8 billion, down 8.5% from the same month last year. For the third time in four months, they fell into contraction, with monthly revenue reaching a new low in two years (since February 2021, NT $937.4 billion).