It has three business segments: the Steel and Foundry businesses, both of which are providers of engineered ceramics, and Precious Metals Processing business.Its products are specialised ceramics, including shrouds, stoppers, nozzles, slide gates, lining refractories and fluxes for the steel production industry and filters, feeding systems, coatings and binders for the foundry industry.
Taiwan Semiconductor's lawsuit comes as that company faces increasing pressure from China in the custom chip, or foundry, business.
It is also increasing its expansion into the foundry business, which fabricates chips, directly challenging TSMC, which provides application chips to companies like Apple and Qualcomm.
But with Japan's chip makers struggling to restructure, UMC guessed the time was right to bring its "foundry" business to Japan.
Apart from the new processors, TSMC has — as of now — a clear edge in its foundry business, with a well-established customer base.
Tom Westley, chairman of the Westley Group foundry business, said the government needed to come up with a strategy for the steel industry.
They represent an important link to New York City's vanishing historic iron foundry business and are afforded no protection even in historic districts.
To make Fiat's other divisions leading players, Mr. Fresco went on an early acquisition rush, buying new businesses for Fiat's Comau factory automation unit and Teksid foundry business.
The Integrated Circuits segment includes analog ICs, logic ICs, memory ICs, ASICs, and foundry business operations.
United Microelectronics has been aggressively developing its foundry business since a restructuring in 1995.
What about Singapore, where Chartered Semiconductor (2000 revenue: $1.1 billion) has 11% of the global foundry business?
