Level Up: Taiwan Seizes The Opportunity to Boost IC Equipment Industry
As chip autonomy has become a global trend, the crucial segment of IC manufacturing equipment has been recognized as a key choke point, especially in light of the US advantage in chip manufacturing equipment and how it was used to disrupt Chinese chip self-sufficiency.
Following the global trend, Taiwan also seeks to strengthen its own chip manufacturing equipment industry. Especially when the rivals in China and South Korea have also drastically increased spendings on this sector.
Last year, Taiwan was the second largest market for semiconductor equipment, mostly driven by TSMC, according to the industry association SEMI’s report. With sales reaching US$17.15 billion, Taiwan was only surpassed by China, where equipment sales reached US $18.72 billion. In 2019, Taiwan just overtook South Korea as the largest chip equipment market with sales figure at US$ 15.58 billion. Now, South Korea still trails closely behind Taiwan with sales figure at US $16.8 billion.
Now, with foundries such as TSMC and UMC expanding their production capacities to cement their leads and address the chip shortage crisis, Taiwan might regain its status as the largest market for semiconductor equipment.
