Samsung Foundry Revenue and Market Share Drop in Q1 2025 as TSMC Dominates

Samsung has been trying hard to make a comeback in its struggling foundry business. Despite its efforts, the company’s revenue and market share continue to decline. Market estimates for Q1 2025 reveal that the Korean company has fallen further below its arch-rival and industry leader, TSMC, in the foundry market.

Samsung Foundry had a poor Q1 2025, faces pressure from SMIC

According to a report from TrendForce, Samsung Foundry managed to earn $2.89 billion in revenue in Q1 2025, which is 11.3% lower than the previous quarter. The company’s share in the global foundry market also dropped slightly to 7.7% from 8.1% in Q4 2024. This tells Samsung has failed to secure big clients, likely due to low yield on cutting-edge nodes, data-sharing risks with its System LSI division, and other reasons.

TrendForce’s findings pointed out two main reasons behind the decline of Samsung’s foundry business in the first three months of 2025. The first is that the company has limited exposure to China’s consumer subsidy programs, while the second is the US restrictions on advanced node.

Unsurprisingly, Taiwan’s TSMC led the global foundry market with a massive 67.6 % share and $25.5 billion revenue in Q1 2025. Likewise, China’s SMIC’s revenue increased by 1.8%, reaching $2.25 billion, while its market share grew to 6% from 5.5% in the previous quarter. These figures strengthen SMIC’s third position in the foundry market chart.

More importantly, it’s alarming for Samsung, which has been exploring different strategies to gain a foothold in the foundry space. If the Korean firm fails to improve its foundry business in the coming months, SMIC is well-positioned to overtake it. Ideally, Samsung would want to catch up with TSMC, but it now risks losing its second position to SMIC.

However, Samsung remains optimistic that with the beginning of the 2nm process era, it will bounce back in the market. The company plans to integrate its 2nm Exynos 2600 chip into its upcoming Galaxy S26 series. If successful, this could help regain trust and confidence among major foundry clients such as Qualcomm and Nvidia.