According to supply chain sources, TSMC will continue to extend its dominance in the pure-play foundry sector with it win for Apple's 2019 A13 chips powering iDevices. TSMC grabbed a 56% share of the global pure-play foundry market in the first half of 2018. With TSMC set to remain Apple's exclusive supplier of A-series chips in 2019, the Taiwan-based foundry stands a good chance of seeing its global market share top 60% next year, the sources said. TSMC has been the exclusive supplier of Apple's A-series chips since 2016.

TSMC's in-house developed integrated fan-out (InFO) wafer-level packaging technology has made its 7nm process technology more competitive than its counterparts, the sources suggested. TSMC is also expected to introduce the industry's first commercially-available 7nm EUV process in 2019.

This was forecast two years ago in a Patently Apple report here. TSMC will go from today's 7nm to 7nm with EUV in 2019 before moving on to 5nm processors if TSMC stays on schedule.

TSMC's 7nm process technology is also expected to obtain orders from AMD, Huawei, MediaTek, Nvidia and Qualcomm. A ramp-up of 7nm chip orders will boost the foundry's market share to a new high in 2019, the sources noted.

With Globalfoundries putting its 7nm plans on hold indefinitely, TSMC will have fewer competitors in the advanced sub-10nm process segment. TSMC is also ahead of Samsung in the 7nm foundry business as the Korea-based foundry has secured orders from only Qualcomm and its own mobile division, the sources noted.

Samsung tried to win Apple back in 2017 by getting them to test out their 7nm processors with EUV. Today's report would suggest that Apple wasn't impressed with Samsung's offering.