TSMC dominates the world of chip production with a true iron fist, in fact, it dominates so much, that the vast majority of price increases that we have been experiencing are due to the fact that TSMC does not have a worthy rival, and as such, being able to ask for the money you want.
However, no one leads forever! This is exactly why Intel has already started to announce that it has well-defined plans for the near future, and of course, we also have a Samsung that is increasingly confident in its own lines, already making proposals to extremely important customers.
The latter seems to be the “foundry” with the most potential to change the market as soon as possible.
Samsung wants to steal one of the biggest customers from TSMC (2nm)
Therefore, despite all its potential, Samsung's 3nm GAA process ended up not having the impact that many would like on the market. This was most likely due to problems with “yields”, that is, the percentage of defects that were too high. A field where TSMC also had difficulties, however, on completely different and apparently easily surmountable levels.
However, a defeat does not mean giving up for Samsung. The South Korean giant has done everything in its power to understand its mistakes, and for that reason it seems to be more than ready to attack the market with its new SF2 GAAFET process, production lines that should be incredible enough to surpass TSMC's already promised 2nm production process.
This is exactly why some current TSMC customers are starting to look at a change to Samsung's lines with good eyes. One of the biggest interested parties appears to be Qualcomm, one of the largest semiconductor design companies, which is also in fact one of the biggest affected by the price increase of TSMC lines. That said, it will only happen in 2026, with the Snapdragon 8 Gen5. So, until then, Samsung has a lot of work to do to try to convince this potential partner.