South Korean technology giant Samsung rumored to launch a wafer foundry price war to grab a single, locking the mature process, price cuts of up to 10%, Samsung rampant, UMC, the world advanced also began to conditionally reduce prices to customers. With the price cut to grab a single war gun start, fear to break the original Taiwan factory expected average selling price (ASP) to support the situation.

The latest survey by technology market research agency TrendForce shows that as of the end of the third quarter of last year, Samsung's global market share of 15.5% of the foundry, ranking second, although significantly behind the leading TSMC (market share of 56.1%), but has been forced to rank third to fifth UMC, Grosvenor, SMIC, the sum of the three companies, still has a very indicator status.

Previously, the South Korean media reported that in response to the downturn in the semiconductor market, Samsung's foundry business has adopted the strategy of "attacking the high level (process) and abandoning the mature (process)", transferring the staff of the mature process line to the high level process and making every effort to sprint for 3nm production, even at the expense of abandoning the mature process customers, but Samsung later denied this through a statement, stressing that the mature process is also indispensable to the company's foundry business and will Continue to try to meet customer demand.

Samsung recently confessed that the industry inventory adjustment led to a decline in capacity utilization in the foundry business. Industry rumors, Samsung not only did not give up the foundry mature process business, in the face of declining capacity utilization, but also offered a more aggressive price war to grab a single, hoping to use this force to save the tide, with lower prices to bring more orders to fill capacity.

Supply chain analysis, Samsung foundry business originally to produce its own chips, but the current economic headwinds, Samsung's own chip demand synchronization setback, idle capacity has increased greatly, in order to fill the capacity gap, the price of a single inevitable. It is reported that Samsung this time for the foundry mature process cut prices, the range of up to 10%, and has taken part of the Taiwan Netcom chip factory orders.

The supply chain pointed out that Samsung foundry previous offer is slightly lower than the industry, and now the overall market demand is still low, Samsung if the heavy medicine, cut the offer 10%, is bound to become the basis for IC design houses to other foundries bargaining, "you do not lower the price, I will go to Samsung production", making the foundry industry is under pressure.

Samsung foundry mature process cut prices, in the industry has created waves, UMC, the world and other Taiwan factories rumored to start conditional price adjustment strategy with customers. In response, UMC responded that the market rumors do not comment, the current offer are stable.

UMC said frankly, at this stage, the order visibility is low, this quarter is full of multiple challenges, capacity utilization will drop from 90% to nearly 70% of the previous quarter, gross margin and wafer shipments fell sharply at the same time, gross margin is afraid to drop to a low of nearly seven quarters, is expected to continue to de-stocking the industry, the second half of the year demand is expected to gradually warm up.