Whatās Going On Here?TSMC, the worldās biggest contract chipmaker, revealed on Friday that business was booming in November. What Does This Mean?Talk about a killer month: TSMC raked in over $7 billion in revenue this November ā a whopping 50% improvement from the same time last year ā to bring this quarterās revenue goal of around $20 billion within spitting distance. The reason for that sterling performance is simple: the firmās top-of-the-range chip-making services were snapped up by titans like Qualcomm, while its favorite customer Apple has got TSMC producing chips to power its latest, high-end iPhone. That means that while whole swathes of the chip industry are being rocked to sleep by a spiraling global economy, TSMCās still bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and bagging success after success. Why Should I Care?Zooming in: Caught in the crossfire.
TSMCās based in disputed territory, Taiwan, and operates in a powder-keg industry ā so despite the firmās bumper revenue, its bosses probably arenāt sleeping all that soundly at night. After all, the US is trying to cut China off from the kind of high-tech chips TSMC specializes in, and is encouraging TSMC to take its operations to safer, overseas locations ā to the US, in short. That meant that TSMCās decision to up its investment in Arizona from $12 billion to $40 billion last week probably wasnāt a total bolt from the blue. But it could signal that the firmās moving into a new, prominent role at the heart of US chipmaking.
The bigger picture: Made in China, soon.
Chinaās not going to take this lying down, mind you. The Peopleās Republic is bringing out the big guns, Alibaba and Tencent, to design chip tech rivaling anything the West has got its hands on. But Rome wasnāt built in a day, and experts think Chinaās vision of home-grown, first-class chips could remain a pipe dream for another few years. | 
