On February 26th, it was announced that TSMC's inaugural Japanese production site, the Kumamoto Factory, has officially commenced operations. Morris Chang, the founder of TSMC, remarked during the inauguration ceremony that this marks the beginning of the revival of Japan's semiconductor industry.
Chang noted that as early as 1985, he observed many similarities between the talents in Taiwan and those in Japan, which was one of the considerations for TSMC to establish a factory in Japan.
In 2019, TSMC received an invitation from the Japanese government to build a wafer fab in Japan. Five years later, Chang expressed great pleasure in seeing this idea come to fruition and believed that JASM would further enhance the resilience of the wafer manufacturing supply chain.
In addition to the Kumamoto Factory, TSMC also plans to construct a second factory in Japan, aiming to start shipments by the end of 2027. The estimated investment for the second factory is $13.9 billion, bringing the total investment for both factories to $22.5 billion.
In terms of product lines, the first factory will produce mature semiconductors with line widths of 12-16 nanometers and 22-28 nanometers, while the second factory will mass-produce cutting-edge 6-nanometer products, among others.
Japan's semiconductor industry once held the top global position, accounting for 50% of the global semiconductor market share in 1988. However, its global market share has now declined to 10%.
With TSMC's establishment of factories in Japan, domestic semiconductor investments in Japan are also beginning to rebound. According to Omdia's estimates, cumulative investments in domestic semiconductor factories in Japan are projected to reach 90 trillion yen from 2022 to 2029.
