Only TSMC and Samsung are ahead
China's largest chipmaker, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), has risen to third place in the global ranking of contract chipmakers, according to TrendForce.
As expected, TSMC tops the list, which at the end of the first quarter controlled more than half of the market (61.7% of total revenue). Samsung is in second place with a share of 11%, but SMIC is in third. Its share increased to 5.7%, while just a quarter earlier it was 5.2%
SMIC is under strict US sanctions, but rising orders from Chinese companies have allowed it to overtake GlobalFoundries and Taiwan's UMC. However, so far UMC lags behind SMIC by an amount that can be attributed to an error (1.75 and 1.737 billion dollars in revenue), and GlobalFoundries with a share of 5.1% is only slightly behind.
SMIC’s success is primarily due to Huawei, since it massively buys 7-nanometer chips from the first. No other company in China has mastered such standards.