'Samsung will make a fearsome comeback if it revives its founders' spirit'

"Samsung has always been a powerful rival — without question. TSMC founder Morris Chang repeatedly called it a 'formidable competitor' at public events."

Lin Hong-wen, an adviser to Taiwan's Business Weekly who has covered TSMC for more than 30 years, made the remarks in an interview on June 4. "To Morris Chang, Samsung was a towering wall he had to overcome his entire life — a fearsome giant," Lin said. "Samsung was a formidable adversary that TSMC could never afford to dismiss; facing it head-on was genuinely frightening." Lin also wrote "TSMC: The Secret Behind the World's No. 1," a bestseller in South Korea, and "The Commercial Giant Samsung," and is widely regarded as a close observer of the Korean semiconductor industry.

TSMC Chairman Wei Che-chia was recently asked at the company's annual shareholder meeting in Hsinchu, Taiwan, whether Samsung Electronics could eventually overtake TSMC to become the foundry leader.

"Our competitors are in effect dreaming," Wei said, expressing strong confidence. He acknowledged that South Korea has built competitive strength in HBM, but said TSMC maintains an unshakeable grip on the world's most advanced semiconductor technology.

Without naming Samsung directly, Wei said: "Our competitors said 10 years from now they would catch up with TSMC — they said that 20 years ago, and they said it again 10 years ago. Now they are saying it once more."

Lin, however, offers a different perspective. Until well into the 2010s, TSMC had not yet surpassed Samsung Electronics even in foundry. At the time, Samsung was producing all of the application processors for Apple's iPhone. It was only when the legal battle between Apple and Samsung over smartphones reached its peak that Apple shifted its next-generation AP orders to TSMC, handing the Taiwanese chipmaker an exclusive. Morris Chang also entered the DRAM business in 1994, but could not survive the semiconductor industry's brutal price wars and suffered a bitter defeat.

"The very company that handed Morris Chang that crushing defeat was Samsung Electronics, which dominated the global DRAM market at the time," Lin said. "TSMC experienced firsthand just how ruthlessly destructive Samsung could be."

Yet Lin said Samsung today lacks the "hungry spirit" it once had. "In the past, Samsung engineers had a fierce determination — they would stay up all night to tear apart and fix equipment problems themselves," he said. "But recently, equipment suppliers in Taiwan have been pointing out that today's engineers try to call in vendor or partner staff even for minor issues, and are reluctant to get their own hands dirty." He added that, as the "Fukuda Report" also noted, Samsung's organizational structure has grown excessively bureaucratic and rigid since Chairman Lee Jae-yong took the helm, losing the flexibility and fighting spirit that once defined it.

Lin said Samsung's greatest weapon remains its ferocious drive to be the world's best — the conviction that finishing anything less than first is unacceptable — combined with the overwhelming "grit" that is a hallmark of Koreans. "If Chairman Lee Jae-yong exercises strong leadership and revives the fighting spirit and relentless pursuit of excellence that defined the founding generation, Samsung can make a fearsome comeback at any time," he said.