0 Semiconductors Industry

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is the world's largest dedicated chip foundry, with over 50% market share in 2017 (according to IC Insights). TSMC was founded in 1987 as a joint venture of Philips, the government of Taiwan, and private investors. It went public as an ADR in the U.S. in 1997. TSMC's scale and high-quality technology allow the firm to generate solid operating margins, even in the highly competitive foundry business. Furthermore, the shift to the fabless business model has created tailwinds for TSMC. The foundry leader has an illustrious customer base, including Apple and Nvidia, that looks to apply cutting-edge process technologies to its semiconductor designs.

Intel is one of the world's largest chipmakers. It designs and manufactures microprocessors for the global personal computer and data center markets. Intel pioneered the x86 architecture for microprocessors. It is also the prime proponent of Moore's law for advances in semiconductor manufacturing. While Intel's server processor business has benefited from the shift to the cloud, the firm has also been expanding into new adjacencies as the personal computer market has declined. These include areas such as the Internet of Things, memory, artificial intelligence, and automotive. Intel has been active on the merger and acquisitions front, recently acquiring Altera, Mobileye, Nervana, and Movidius in order to assist its efforts in non-PC arenas.

Nvidia is a leading designer of graphics processing units that enhance the experience on computing platforms. The firm's chips are used in a variety of end markets, including high-end PCs for gaming, data centers, and automotive infotainment systems. In recent years, the firm has broadened its focus from traditional PC graphics applications such as gaming to more complex and favorable opportunities, including artificial intelligence and autonomous driving, which leverage the high-performance capabilities of the firm's graphics processing units.

Broadcom--the combined entity of Broadcom and Avago--boasts a highly diverse product portfolio across an array of end markets. Avago focused primarily on radio frequency filters and amplifiers used in high-end smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone and Samsung Galaxy devices, in addition to an assortment of solutions for wired infrastructure, enterprise storage, and industrial end markets. Legacy Broadcom targeted networking semiconductors, such as switch and physical layer chips, broadband products (such as television set-top box processors), and connectivity chips that handle standards such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The company recently acquired Brocade and CA Technologies to bolster its offerings in enterprise storage and mainframe software, respectively.

Founded in 1984 and based in the Netherlands, ASML is a leading manufacturer of photolithography systems used in the production of semiconductors. Photolithography is the process in which a light source is used to expose circuit patterns from a photomask onto a semiconductor wafer. ASML's products are used at every major semiconductor manufacturer, including Intel, Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.

Dallas-based Texas Instruments generates about 95% of its revenue from semiconductors and the remainder from its well-known calculators. Texas Instruments is the world's largest maker of analog chips, which are used to process real-world signals such as sound and power. Texas Instruments also has a leading market share position in digital signal processors, used in wireless communications, and microcontrollers used in a wide variety of electronics applications.

Qualcomm develops and licenses wireless technology and also designs chips for smartphones. The company's key patents revolve around CDMA and OFDMA technologies, which are standards in wireless communications that are the backbone of all 3G and 4G networks. The firm is poised to be a leader in 5G as well. Qualcomm's IP is licensed by virtually all wireless device makers. The firm is also the world's largest wireless chip vendor, supplying many premier handset makers with leading-edge processors.

Applied Materials is one of the world's largest suppliers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment, providing materials engineering solutions to help make nearly every chip in the world. The firm's systems are used in every process step with the exception of lithography. Key tools include those for chemical and physical vapor deposition, etching, chemical mechanical polishing, wafer- and reticle-inspection, critical dimension measurement, and defect-inspection scanning electron microscopes.

Micron historically focused on providing DRAM for PCs and servers. The firm expanded into the NAND flash memory market over the past decade. It increased its DRAM scale with the purchase of Elpida (completed in mid-2013) and Inotera (completed in December 2016).

Advanced Micro Devices designs and produces microprocessors and low-power processor solutions for the computer and consumer electronics industries. The majority of the firm's sales are in the computer market via CPUs and GPUs. AMD acquired graphics processor and chipset maker ATI in 2006 in an effort to improve its positioning in the PC food chain. In 2009, the firm spun out its manufacturing operations to form a foundry joint venture, GlobalFoundries.