SMIC from China is the world's third-largest chip contract manufacturer

The two largest Chinese chip contract manufacturers Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) and HuaHong continue to grow strongly. SMIC is now reliably generating quarterly sales in excess of two billion US dollars, making it the world's third-largest chip contract manufacturer. HuaHong exceeded the billion mark for the first time in the fourth quarter of 2024.

This is according to a summary by market observer Trendforce. The figures are particularly useful for manufacturers such as Samsung, which do not specify exactly how much turnover comes specifically from chip contract manufacturing.

SMIC grew by 32 percent within a year and HuaHong by a huge 59 percent. The HuaHong Group includes the manufacturers HHGrace and HLMC.

Revenue of the world's largest chip contract manufacturers (in billion US dollars, source: Trendforce)
Contract manufacturer	Headquarter	Revenue Q4/2024	Revenue Q3/2024	Revenue Q4/2023	Year-on-year comparison
TSMC	Taiwan	26,85	23,53	19,66	+37%
Samsung	Südkorea	3,26	3,31	3,62	-10%
SMIC	China	2,21	2,17	1,68	+32%
UMC	Taiwan	1,87	1,87	1,73	+8%
GF	USA	1,83	1,74	1,85	-1%
Huahong	China	1,04	0,98	0,66	+59%
Tower	Isreal	0,39	0,37	0,35	+10%
VIS	Taiwan	0,36	0,37	0,3	+17%
Nexchip	China	0,34	0,33	0,31	+12%
PSMC	Taiwan	0,33	0,34	0,33	0%
Top 10 total		38,48	35	30,49	+26%

Samsung stumbles

Meanwhile, Samsung's manufacturing division (Samsung Foundry) is in crisis. On the one hand, the manufacturer can hardly win customers for its state-of-the-art processes – Samsung has reportedly had problems with the yield of functional chips for years. On the other hand, competition for established/older manufacturing processes is growing, especially from China.

Most recently, Samsung's mobile division even switched to memory chips from competitor Micron instead of its own sister with the Galaxy S25 series. Such changes are not reflected in the figures here, as they do not include memory products.

At -10%, Samsung recorded the only significant decline among the ten largest chip contract manufacturers. If SMIC continues to grow so rapidly, second place would not be unrealistic for much longer.

TSMC's lead widens

Meanwhile, TSMC was the only non-Chinese chip contract manufacturer with annual growth in excess of 30 percent. Quarterly sales rose from just under 20 billion to almost 27 billion US dollars. The biggest sales driver continues to be Nvidia's AI accelerators, whose GPUs are manufactured by TSMC.

Meanwhile, TSMC's market power continues to grow. The manufacturer alone accounted for 67 percent of the turnover of all chip contract manufacturers. The top 10 together accounted for 96 percent – and traditionally only small manufacturers are among them.

Trendforce does not include Intel Foundry in the top 10 because the market observers exclude the turnover of sister companies – as well as Samsung. To date, Intel Foundry has mainly produced CPUs for Intel. The first major external customers are not expected to join until 2026 with the production generation 18A. There are also no manufacturers represented that produce chips for their own products, such as Infineon.

(mma)