SAN FRANCISCO—Taiwanese semiconductor foundries Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) reported this week that sales for April increased more than 9 percent compared to March, sequential growth that could signal an upswing for the chip contract manufacturing market.
TSMC (Hsinchu, Taiwan) said unconsolidated sales for April totaled about NT$40.01 billion (about $1.36 billion), up 9.3 percent compared to March and up 10.4 percent compared with April.
TMSC's revenue through April totaled NT$144.26 billion (about $4.91 billion), about 3.9 percent higher than the first four months of 2011, the company said.
On a consolidated basis, including revenue from TSMC's U.S. subsidiary Wafertech, TSMC's April sales totaled about NT$40.5 billion (about $1.38 billion), up 9.2 percent from March and up 9.1 percent from April 2011, TSMC said. TSMC's consolidated revenue through April was NT$146 billion (about $4.97 billion), an increase of 2.5 percent compared to the same period of 2011.
UMC (Hsinchu) reported April sales of NT$9.12 billion (about $310.87 million), up 11.4 percent from March, but down 4.6 percent from April 2011. UMC reported sales of NT$32.89 billion (about $1.12 billion) through April, down 12.7 percent compared with the first four months of 2011