iPhone 14 production boosts TMSC Q3 revenue as rest of industry struggles

After Foxconn reported a “storming demand” on iPhone 14 Pro production, TSMC is another manufacturer to benefit from the new iPhones as it revealed a higher-than-expected quarterly revenue. This comes at a time when the rest o the industry expects a slowdown.

TSMC, the largest contract chipmaker, rose 48% to about $19.4 billion in the third quarter, according to Bloomberg’s calculations while other manufacturers warned that they are facing “a tougher market as inventories build up and orders are being cut by data center and consumer tech clients.” 

Thanks to TSMC, while investors feared a “severe downturn,” Morgan Stanley now projects a return to growth for the chip industry by the second half of 2023

This TSMC better-than-expected revenue can be explained thanks to Apple diversifying the chips used on the iPhone 14 lineup and the iPhone 14 Pro models selling better than ever. 

Since supply constraints still trouble the industry, Apple is diversifying the chips it offers by maintaining the iPhone 14 with last year’s A15 Bionic, while its best-selling iPhones 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max feature the new A16 Bionic processor. 

With that, TSMC was able to keep manufacturing a chip it already mastered while giving a boost to the new processor introduced by the Cupertino company. 

Here’s what Bloomberg Intelligence’s Charles Shum said about TSMC:

For now, overseas capacity expansion will be front and center, especially in the US and Japan, as TSMC pushes to meet customers’ diversification requests and rises to the challenge of growing competition from Samsung and Intel. Rapidly rising depreciation and material costs, coupled with increasing uncertainty in smartphone demand, are putting a cap on its gross margin.”

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