Horizontal coordinating contracts in the semiconductor industry

Abstract

Integrated device manufacturers (IDMs) and foundries are two types of manufacturers in the semiconductor industry. IDMs integrate both design and manufacturing functions whereas foundries solely focus on manufacturing. Since foundries often have cost advantage over IDMs due to their specialization and economies of scale, IDMs have incentives to source from foundries for the purpose of avoiding excessive capacity investment risk. As the IDM is also a potential capacity source, the IDM and foundry are in a horizontal setting rather than a purely vertical setting. In the absence of sophisticated contracts, the benchmark contract for the IDM and foundry is a wholesale price contract. We define “coordinating” contracts as those that improve both the IDM’s and foundry’s expected profits over the benchmark wholesale price contract and also lead to the maximum system profit. This paper examines if there exist coordinating capacity reservation contracts. It is found that wholesale price contracts in the horizontal setting cannot achieve the maximum system profit due to either double marginalization effect, or “misalignment of capacity-usage-priority”. In contrast, if the IDM’s capacity investment risk is not too low, there always exist coordinating capacity reservation contracts. Furthermore, under coordinating contracts, the IDM’s sourcing structure, either sole sourcing from the foundry or dual sourcing, is contingent on the firms’ cost structures.