Following TSMC’s recent decision to raise 12″ wafer prices, Samsung has followed suit and done the same. A few days back, TSMC announced in a press release that it was increasing foundry prices by up to 20% on account of tightness in the supply chain. Samsung made a similar announcement today, thereby pushing pureplay foundry prices up by as much as 20% for the second half of the year. (Cialis UK)
According to industry reports, Samsung had already notified customers of the impending hike in wafer prices, and as such, most chipmakers were expecting the news sooner or later. Despite being behind TSMC both in terms of yields and process technology, the Korean foundry has announced similar increments in production prices across the board.
This move has reportedly been approved by some of Samsung’s customers, while the rest are signing new contracts. The increase in wafer pricing will vary on the client’s order volume, process technology, and contract period. The updated contracts will kick in within the next 4-5 months.
The primary lineups that will be affected include NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs (codenamed Ampere), and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 888/888 Plus SoCs. The former is likely to get a higher quote, prompting additional hikes in the final MSRP. Samsung is ranked second on the list of pureplay foundries with Q2 revenue of 4.33 billion USD which is less than half of TSMC’s $13.3 billion earnings during the same period.
According to DigiTimes, TSMC is in talks with its equipment and materials suppliers about lowering prices for next year by 15%. Whether this will actually come to fruition remains to be seen.
