Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) might be on course to take over 100 percent of Apple’s A10 chip orders, but that’s not to say that it’s entirely without problems right now.
According to a new report, a recent earthquake which hit one of TSMC’s factories in southern Taiwan caused more damage than initially thought: with resulting wafer shipments for the first quarter of 2016 likely to fall as a result.
The earthquake took place on the morning of February 6. Although TSMC initially said the impact on wafer shipments would be less than 1 percent, it has now admitted that damage is worse than it originally assessed.
Fortunately, it seems that damage to the various foundry machines won’t take too long to fix — but even the loss of a few days, compared to initial estimates that things would be back to normal within around 48 hours, could stop TSMC hitting its revenue targets of $5.9-6 billion for the first quarter of 2016.
That’s not great news for TSMC at a time when it’s busily trying to convince companies like Apple to put all its chip-manufacturing eggs in one basket.
Source: Digitimes
