$7 billion gap with TSMC casts doubt over Samsung’s foundry ambitions

Samsung Foundry wishes to close the gap with TSMC, the world's top contract chipmaker, but on the contrary the gap continues to increase. A comparison of their revenues for Q1 2025 reveals that TSMC made $7 billion more in revenue compared to Samsung's semiconductor division, highlighting the sustained demand for its manufacturing capacity.

Samsung Electronics saw the earnings from its semiconductor division jump 9% in the first quarter of this year, but it also represented a 17% decline over the same period last year.

On the contrary, TSMC reported first quarter earnings of $26.4 billion, which was a significant increase of 42% compared to the same period last year. Give Samsung's revenues of $16.97 billion, there was clear gap of more than $7 billion in earnings between the two competitors in just one quarter.

Samsung addressed the challenges faced by its semiconductor division, highlighting seasonal demand weakness and stagnant utilization rates for a muted earnings result. Samsung became the world's top semiconductor company by revenue when it overtook Intel back in 2021.

This was largely on the back of a hot memory market, and with Samsung's position as the dominant supplier, it took full advantage of the memory super cycle. However, starting with the third quarter of 2023, the memory market suffered a slowdown that it never fully recovered from, and that TSMC to surpass Samsung Electronics in sales.

TSMC has forecasted higher revenues for Q2 2025 which would likely mean that this $7 billion gap in revenues between the two companies could widen further later this year, as Samsung's semiconductor division still seeks to find a way out of the many challenges it faces.