A9 chipmaker records highest earnings in its 29-year history

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chips
There's money in chips.
Photo: Cult of Mac

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), a.k.a. the world’s largest contract chip maker and one of Apple’s two suppliers for the present-gen A9 chip, has announced that its 2015 earnings were the highest in its 29-year history.

Contrasting with reports of developers said to be suffering the effects of weakened Apple orders, TSMC has thrived on the back of the iPhone 6 and 6s — with $9.15 billion in net profits this year alone, representing a 16.2 percent annual increase.

TSMC said that net profit, earnings-per-share, and consolidated sales all broke the company’s past records, although gross margins fell 0.8 percentage points from 2014 to 48.7 percent.

The strong earnings should continue in 2016, too, with TSMC rumored to be Apple’s exclusive supplier for the next-gen A10 processor, using “in-house developed backend integrated fan-out (InFO) wafer-level packaging,” built with the company’s 16nm FinFET process technology.

Even if TSMC does wind up sharing manufacturing with Samsung (which seems likely), this year’s earning report is just another demonstration of how valuable it is if you can secure and deliver Apple orders!

Source: Focus Taiwan

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