TSMC has announced that its August revenues have increased 28% sequentially thanks to ‘robust’ shipments of 10nm chips – which include the A11 chip used in this year’s iPhones …
While the year-on-year rise to date is a more modest 2.6%, the company is forecasting another record year, estimating that total year revenue will be up 5-10% on 2016, reports Digitimes.
Its production of chips using the 10nm process accounted for 10% of total revenues last month, up from just 1% in the previous quarter.
TSMC is believed to be the sole supplier of A11 chips, just as it was for the earlier generation used in the iPhone 7. Previous A-series chip production was split between TSMC and Samsung, but the Korean-made chips used in the iPhone 6s were shown to caused the device to run hotter and offer poorer battery life than the TSMC versions.
Samsung hasn’t given up hope of winning A-series chip orders for next year’s iPhones, with one Korean report suggesting that it has already done so. TSMC, however, still has a technical lead over Samsung, already offering a 7nm process for next year’s devices.
