14 DAY TRIAL // Though market watchers predicted that TSMC's sales would fall by over 10% on-quarter during the upcoming October-December period, it seems that this forecast has been changed to a drop of 4-5% sequentially, because demand on the part of major chip designers has increased.
Demand for chips of all kinds has been continuously shifting over the past several months, leading to a fairly uncertain market outlook for TSMC.
As one of the major foundries in the world, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company always has to watch out for how its clients change demand and somehow cope with financial issues that may arise because of such shifts.
The situation at the start of the third quarter was, for the most part, characterized by weaker demand than was expected from the end-market.
This led to inventories piling up, to the point where market watchers estimated that the foundry's sales would show a sequential drop of 10%.
Now, it seems that demand picked up in both consumer electronics and communications sectors, with major chip designers speeding up their pace of increasing wafer starts.
Basically, the prediction of the 10% decrease was changed to 4-5% sequential revenue drop for Q4 2010.
It should, of course, be noted that this information was supplied by a report made by Digitimes, as TSMC has yet to reveal its Q4 guidance.
Among the companies that began to increase their orders at TSMC are Broadcom, Texas Instruments (TI), NXP Semiconductors and Infineon Technologies.
The report also makes a point of mentioning that major chip designers for mobile devices, such as iPhones and the Apple iPad, have upped their orders.
What remains to be seen is just how things progress and if the demand in end-markets recovers enough for TSMC to publish a more favorable outlook for the next quarter and, eventually, the one after it.