All,
Rather that beat the dead horse as to how far away they are from commercialisation, or speculate on likely share value, I thought I'd challenge dear HC members to take a view on theoretical output from the fabs currently aligned with AP. We know one is Tower Jazz. From Wikipedia (don't laugh), the following information relates to their total output:
Tower Semiconductor was founded in 1993, with the acquisition of National Semiconductor’s 150mm wafer fabrication facility. Tower became a public company in 1994 and shares are traded on NASDAQ (TSEM) and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TSEM). In January 2001, an adjacent facility (Fab 2) was constructed.In September 2008, Tower acquired Jazz Semiconductor in a stock for stock transaction. In November 2009, the combined companies officially launched as TowerJazz. The merger provided several key benefits: increased global capacity, cross-selling opportunities among diverse customer bases of both companies, a more comprehensive product portfolio, and a stronger financial base.[citation needed]In June 2011, TowerJazz acquired Micron Technology’s fabrication facility in Nishiwaki City, Hyogo, Japan. The acquisition nearly doubled TowerJazz’s 2010 internal manufacturing capacity and cost-effectively increased production by 60,000 wafers per month.In April 2014, TowerJazz announced the successful transaction with Panasonic Corporation (First Section of TSE and NSE ticker: 6752) to form a newly established Japanese company, TowerJazz Panasonic Semiconductor Co. (TPSCo) for the manufacture of Panasonic and additional third party products. TowerJazz announced cessation of its Nishiwaki facility operations in the course of rationalizing and restructuring its manufacturing and business activities in Japan. This enables the company to reduce its annual fixed costs by approximately $130 million per annum.[citation needed]In February 2016, TowerJazz announced the successful acquisition of an 8-inch wafer fabrication facility in San Antonio, Texas, United States from Maxim Integrated Products, Inc., the consideration, of $40 million was paid by approximately 3.3 million ordinary TowerJazz shares. This acquisition increased TowerJazz's production by 28,000 wafers per month.
From this I take theoretical output as follows (assuming they dumped existing clients and just made AP wafers):
2010 output - 60,000/mth
2011 output - extra 60,000/mth added
2016 output - extra 28,000/mth
Total adjusted monthly output 148,000 wafers per mth
Yearly theoretical output 1,776,000 per year
If capacity replicated by other anonymous fab that doubles theoretical wafer production to just over 3.5mio wafers annually. That's if they dropped their existing orders / clients and worked only on AP wafers.
Per Yuval's Mems recent Pit St research presso (May 2019) the theoretical market available annual market is 10,000,000,000 chips and if AP wanted 10% market share, there's going to be a bit of work to ramp up to 1,000,000,000 chips.
Apologies in advance for my lack of understanding an technical knowledge, and welcome any responses.
(20min delay)