Three Taiwanese Companies Withdraw Data from SICAS

Published:2011/10/31 2:06:00 Author:Phyllis From:SeekIC

Three Taiwanese companies, Nanya Technology, TSMC and UMC, no longer provide data to the Semiconductor Industry Capacity Statistics. As a significant change in membership in the 2Q 2011 data release from SICAS.

These companies had been in previous SICAS data for several years. Nanya is a relatively small semiconductor manufacturer with revenue of $1.8 billion in 2010. TSMC and UMC are the two largest semiconductor foundries, with 2010 revenue of $13.3 billion and $4.0 billion. IC Insights, which includes foundries in its rankings of semiconductor suppliers, listed TSMC as the third largest semiconductor supplier in both 2010 and the first half 2011. UMC was 19th in both rankings.

The SICAS membership list is also missing National Semiconductor, whose data may now be included with Texas Instruments following the acquisition move earlier this year.

TSMC and UMC represented about 16% of total IC capacity in SICAS. Thus losing these companies has caused a major disruption in SICAS data and makes comparison of the 2Q 2011 data with previous quarters invalid in most categories.

The 2Q 2011 IC capacity was 2084 thousand wafers, which is up 1.6% from 2052 thousand in 1Q 2011. The record capacity from 3Q 2008 is 2223 thousand wafers.

The March 11, 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami also had some impact on capacity. The disaster affected several wafer fabs either through direct damage or through power outages. Since SICAS data is based on average capacity throughout a quarter, the impact on 1Q 2011 SICAS data was not likely significant. Most of the affected fabs were back to full production by the end of April. Almost all of the fabs were back up by mid July. Although the size of the impact is difficult to estimate, 2Q 2011 capacity and utilization would have been somewhat higher if not for the Japan disaster.

The change in participants in SICAS is disappointing. SICAS has enjoyed fairly high participation rates since it was formed in 1995. The spirit of cooperation as foundry companies and integrated device manufacturers were willing to share data for the first time, with the goal of providing useful information for the entire semiconductor industry.

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