Silicon Foundry Arena Hit by Consolidation
By Mark LaPedus, SemiMD senior editor
The silicon foundry vendors first emerged in the late 1980s, thereby starting a major trend towards outsourcing in the IC industry.
More recently, there are too many foundry vendors in the industry, causing a wave of consolidation in the sector. There are too many foundries and not enough business to go around.
In 2009, GlobalFoundries Inc.’s parent company acquired Chartered Semiconductor, which was then merged into GlobalFoundries. Right now, there is a pending merger between two Chinese foundries, Shanghai Hua Hong NEC Electronics Co. Ltd. (HHNEC) and Grace Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (GSMC). And last week, Taiwan foundry vendor United Microelectronics Corp. (UMC) took a majority stake in Chinese foundry He Jian Technology Suzhou Co. Ltd.
The next victim in the shakeout could be LFoundry, a small analog and mixed-signal foundry specialist in Germany. In 2008, Japan’s Renesas Technology Corp. sold its fab in Germany – Renesas Semiconductor Europe (Landshut) GmbH (RSEL) – to Silicon Foundry Holding (SFH).
The eventual company became LFoundry, which bought the Landshut, Germany fab from Renesas in 2008 and the Rousset, France fab from Atmel in 2010.
Now, LFoundry may be near the brink of going under. Calls to LFoundry in Germany were answered by a security guard, who said the Landshut unit was in insolvency proceedings in Germany.
Christian Dieseldorff, an analyst with SEMI, said only LFoundry’s fab in Landshut announced insolvency. “As far as I know (LFoundry’s) fab in Rousset, France is still alive,” he said. “There are also plans for a new fab in Kulim, Malaysia, which began construction recently. This may continue pending market condition of course.”
Joanne Itow, an analyst with Semico Research, said: “We did hear that they filed for insolvency. And we also heard that they are shutting the Landshut fab, transferring products to the Rousset fab.”
Semico’s database shows the company makes analog/mixed signal, RF and other products based on 350nm and 150nm geometries.
Tags: GlobalFoundries, LFoundry, UMC