01.15.2001
UMC initiating foundry pricing war

According to local press reports, UMC (2303 ‘Lian Dian’) has aggressively cut its foundry pricing for some of its customers since Dec 2000. Rates have been slashed by as much as 20-25% for memory products and 10% for logic chips. The company recently announced its intention to broadly lower prices for the 0.18um process. UMC’s main competitor in the sector, TSMC (2330 ‘Tai Ji Dian’), has yet to offer price cuts but has seen those customers who use both foundries divert orders to UMC. Should semiconductor demand further slow, a foundry price war will become inevitable.
Linda Liu