Technology

Nanotech: Shaping the Future of Multiple Industries

Published

9 years ago

July 21, 2014

Jeff Desjardins

Nanotech: Shaping the Future of Multiple Industries

Through innovation, the physical footprint of technology is becoming smaller day-by-day, and nanotech is the extreme. Nanotech is a vast overarching umbrella for technology in many industries (including energy, biotech, warfare, etc.), and it is garnering significant interest from both the private and public sector.

Nanotech’s reach in a wide range of industries is creating radical innovation across the board. Perhaps the most significant impact of nanotech is in health and medicine. Nanotech is being utilized in various forms of cancer treatment and it is progressively succeeding in fighting the deadly disease. Researchers have achieved promising results by applying gold nanoparticles to cancerous cells and heating the gold by using infrared lasers. In contrast to removing cancerous cells through surgery, this procedure is non-invasive and does no harm to healthy cells. Nanomedcine is a growing and promising industry. By some estimates, the market has the potential to be worth $177 billion by 2019.

Ray Kurzweil, renowned futurist and Director of Engineering at Google, has an interesting insight for the future of nanotech: “By the time we get to the 2040s, we’ll be able to multiply human intelligence a billionfold. That will be a profound change that’s singular in nature. Computers are going to keep getting smaller and smaller. Ultimately, they will go inside our bodies and brains and make us healthier, make us smarter.”

Original infographic from: Jabil

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Technology

Ranked: Largest Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue

Most of the 10 largest semiconductor foundries in the world, are headquartered in just three Asian countries, accounting for 90% of the entire industry’s revenue.

Published

2 weeks ago

November 20, 2023

Marcus Lu

A cropped chart showing the largest semiconductor foundry companies by their percentage of global revenues in Q1 2023.

Ranked: Largest Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue

They’re in our phones, cars, planes, and even fridges.

Semiconductor chips have become critical for the modern way of life, and the biggest semiconductor foundry companies rake in billions of dollars from widespread demand.

This chart shows the largest semiconductor foundry companies by their percentage of global revenues in Q1 2023, using data sourced from Trendforce.

ℹ️ We highlight data for companies that only operate foundries (fabrication plants) that manufacture chips for clients, also known as a “pure-play” foundries, as well as companies that design and manufacture their own chips, known as integrated device manufacturers. “Fabless” manufacturers that only design and don’t manufacture their own chips are not included.

Semiconductor Foundry Companies by Revenue

At the top of the list and dwarfing every other company by revenue share is TSMC which earned 60% (or nearly $17 billion) of the entire industry’s revenue in Q1 2023.

Founded in 1987, TSMC is a pure-play foundry that has become Taiwan’s largest company and manufactures products for a host of clients including Apple, NVIDIA, and AMD.

Rank	Company	Country	Revenue (Q1 2023, USD)
1	TSMC	🇹🇼 Taiwan	$16,735M
2	Samsung	🇰🇷 South Korea	$3,446M
3	GlobalFoundries	🇺🇸 US	$1,841M
4	UMC	🇹🇼 Taiwan	$1,784M
5	SMIC	🇨🇳 China	$1,462M
6	HuaHong Group	🇨🇳 China	$845M
7	Tower Semiconductor	🇮🇱 Israel	$356M
8	PSMC	🇹🇼 Taiwan	$332M
9	VIS	🇹🇼 Taiwan	$269M
10	DB Hitek	🇰🇷 South Korea	$234M
	Other		$556M
	Global Total		$27,860M

Note: Revenue based on the following conversion rates: USD 1 = WON 1,276; USD 1 = NTD 30.4.

Well behind TSMC in foundry revenues is integrated device manufacturer Samsung, the biggest company in South Korea, which made $3.4 billion (12.4% of the industry’s revenue) from its semiconductor manufacturing business.

GlobalFoundries from the U.S., UMC from Taiwan and SMIC from China round out the top five, with each taking home around 6% of industry’s revenue share in Q1 2023. The former spun out from AMD’s manufacturing arm when the company went fabless in 2009.

Industry concentration is apparent in semiconductors. For example, the top 10 semiconductor foundry companies account for 98% of the entire industry’s revenue. Furthermore, 90% of the market is dominated by companies in just three Asian countries: Taiwan, South Korea, and China.