TSMC has held 73 percent of the pure-play foundry market for two quarters running, and every rival on the table is flat or lower than it was a year ago
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Five names and a residual divide the entire pure-play foundry market between them, and only one of them grew.
Counterpoint Research posted the second quarter of 2026 to its quarterly foundry share tracker on 26 August. Sector revenue rose 29 percent on the year. The firm attributes that to artificial intelligence orders and to capacity being reallocated, which it says is still producing supply and demand imbalances at advanced and mature nodes alike. It publishes no revenue level on the page, only the growth rate and the shares, so this brief carries no dollar figure either.
TSMC took 73 percent of it. That is a second consecutive quarter at that number, and Counterpoint puts it down to 2nm reaching mass production, 3nm ramping, and supply staying tight in both 8 inch and 12 inch mature nodes and in advanced packaging.
Everyone else went sideways or down
The table runs six quarters, from the first quarter of 2025 to the second of 2026, and it is worth reading across rather than down.
TSMC goes 68, 71, 72, 72, 73, 73. Samsung Foundry goes 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7. SMIC reads 6, then 5 for five straight quarters. UMC goes 5, 5, 4, 4, 4, 4. Global Foundries goes 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3. The residual line, which Counterpoint labels Others, goes 8, 8, 7, 8, 7, 7.
Set the newest column against the one four quarters back and the shape is plain. TSMC is up 5 points. Samsung Foundry is down 2. SMIC, UMC, Global Foundries and Others are each down 1. Nobody but the leader took a point off anybody.
A second table further down the same page extends the window back one more quarter, to the fourth of 2024, where TSMC reads 69, Samsung Foundry 8 and SMIC 6. The two tables agree on every quarter they share.
One caveat on the arithmetic. Counterpoint prints these shares as whole numbers, and the six entries for the second quarter add to 99 rather than 100. The page does not reconcile that and neither does this brief.
The number two and the number three
Samsung Foundry held second place with its share, in Counterpoint's account, relatively unchanged from the first quarter. The firm names improving the yield on SF2 as Samsung's major target, which describes unfinished work rather than a solved problem. It credits demand at SF4 and SF5, and a foundry wafer price increase in the first half of 2026, as the drivers of Samsung's revenue growth.
SMIC took third on what Counterpoint calls a record high revenue quarter. The firm attributes that to strong local demand and to overseas orders spilling over, not to share taken from anyone. Its share line did not move.
What the firm expects next
Counterpoint says it expects utilisation among pure-play foundries to stay at a relatively high level while foundry wafer average selling prices continue rising through the second half of 2026. That is the firm's expectation and is recorded here as one.
The page says the data is updated every quarter, so a reader arriving later will see a different newest column. The identifiers for this one are the 26 August dateline and the Q2 2026 header.
