According to the report of IC Insights, the global semiconductor capital expenditures will surge 34% in 2021, reaching the record $152 billion which exceeding the highest record of $113.1 billion last year. As the industry’s demand for ICs manufactured by advanced process technology nodes continues to rise, the capital expenditures for foundries will be more and more important. It is expected that the capital expenditures of foundries will account for 35% of semiconductors in 2021, becoming the largest part of major products/categories.
Among foundries, TSMC is expected to account for 57% this year. However, Samsung is also investing heavily in the foundry business and is working hard to persuade more leading fabless suppliers to stay away from TSMC.
In addition, the capital expenditures of SMIC may drop by 25% to $4.3 billion, accounting for only 8% of the total expenditures of all foundries. Among all semiconductor capital expenditures, foundries and MPU/MCU saw the largest increase of 42%, followed by analog chips/others (41%) and logic chips (40%).
