Semiconductor manufacturing is a very lucrative business. There are many chip designers but only a couple of foundries that can handle chip manufacturing on advanced process nodes. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. remains the undisputed leader and while Samsung has invested heavily in bridging that gap, the latest figures show that it's still a very long road ahead for the Korean giant. Samsung has a lot of catching up to doThe latest data from market research firm Counterpoint Research shows that TSMC captured a 71% share in the pure-play foundry market for the second quarter of this year, up 6% from the same period last year.Pure-play only refers to the contract manufacturing for semiconductors and doesn't include other parts of the foundry ecosystem, such as design and packaging.Samsung is far behind TSMC in this race. It took second place with only 8% of the market share, once again highlighting that the gap between the two is not one that can easily be bridged. China's SMIC took third place with a 5% share.TSMC has seen intense demand for its 3nm process, particularly due to the AI chip boom, as it has emerged as the sole manufacturing partner for some of the biggest AI hardware companies in the world. On the other hand, Samsung has struggled to win significant orders for its advanced processes, at least to the extent that it would enable the company to chip away at TSMC's lead.Samsung's recent $16.5 billion deal with Tesla for its next-gen AI chips and an expected 2nm Snapdragon manufacturing deal with Qualcomm may help the company post better numbers in the coming years, but it still needs to do a lot more to emerge as a truly serious competitor to TSMC.The post Samsung’s biggest rival continues to crush it in this lucrative business appeared first on SamMobile.