Trouble ahead as chipmaker cuts prices, sees slow recovery
Like everyone else in the entire computing supply chain, Taiwanese chip foundry TSMC saw a sudden and precipitous drop in revenue in the final quarter of last year, but unlike many others, it's being relatively open about how hard it was hit, and about how long it thinks it will be before things really start to turn around.
TSMC's Chairman, Morris Chang, recently told the Wall Street Journal that his company's revenues dropped by 30.1 percent in the last three months of last year, and this number matches up quite well with what I've heard whispered (second- or third-hand) about another semi maker's sudden revenue drop in that same period. Indeed, I wouldn't be surprised if pretty much everyone in the business of actually putting transistors onto silicon saw a 30 percent drop in revenue in that same period.
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