Sources have suggested that Samsung has yet to win any major customers for the project and is holding off placing orders to other suppliers for the $17 billion factory in Taylor city.
The delay in equipment deliveries is a major setback to a project which is at the heart of Samsung’s ambition to move into contract chip manufacturing and to compete with market leader TSMC, and it highlights what is becoming a growing gulf between Samsung and the likes of TSMC and SK Hynix who are increasing the production of high-end chips.
ASML recently cut its 2025 sales forecast, citing delayed fabs as part of the problem, and Samsung’s decision to push back deliveries may have played a part.
Samsung had ordered a number of EUV machines, which cost around $200 million each, from ASML but how many and what the financial terms are, remain confidential.
However, without new volume clients there’s now a real chance that Samsung may have to delay the project beyond 2026, and analysts have warned that the fab could become a ‘stranded asset’.
While Samsung told Reuters that there were no plans to delay the plant’s opening in 2026 the problems it’s facing are symptomatic of a very competitive foundry market and while TSMC’s share of the contract manufacturing market continues to grow, it’s now at over 60 per cent, Samsung, beset with numerous technical problems, has seen its share fall to just 11 per cent.
That fall in market share, from almost 20 per cent five years ago, underscores the technological challenges Samsung is facing as it looks to develop advanced chip manufacturing capabilities.
