At the same time South Korea and Taiwan – with the likes of Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. – now play host to 50 percent of the 300mm wafer capacity in aggregate and own 56 percent. IC companies headquartered in South Korea and Taiwan lead the way in capital-intensive segments of the IC industry such as high-unit-volume products such as DRAM and flash memory or foundry services.
South Korea-based companies Samsung and SK Hynix account for 35 percent of global 300mm wafer capacity and Samsung alone controls about 24 percent of all the world's 300mm capacity.
300mm wafer manufacturing capacity by fab location and ownership based on 4.2 million wafers, December 2014. Source: IC Insights.
IC Insights points out that SK Hynix’s largest fab is in China and Samsung also has a 300mm fab in China as well as two in the United States. As location China already has more than three times as much 300mm wafer fabrication capacity as the whole of Europe.
Taiwan is close behind South Korea and Taiwanese companies currently manage 21 percent of the world’s 300mm capacity. Most of that (85 percent) is foundry capacity with the remainder in memory. There is only one Taiwanese-controlled 300mm fab located outside of Taiwan and that is UMC's fab in Singapore. TSMC has a 200mm fab in mainland China with some talk of upgrading to 300mm wafers for 28nm CMOS production there.
North America plays host to 15 percent of global production on 300mm wafers but North American companies own 28 percent of the manufacturing capacity.
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