Rumor: TSMC is having some issues cranking out 28 nm chips, Snapdragon S4 may be delayed

Qualcomm, NVIDIA, ST-Ericsson, they don’t actually make chips, they design them. Companies like TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company) are responsible for producing the actual physical chip, and the folks at SemiAccurate are saying that they’re having some issues cranking out 28 nm products. To be more precise, they say TSMC hasn’t produced a single 28 nm chip since mid February, and that they’re likely not going to resume production until the end of this month. Why should this concern you? Because Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon, the S4, is built using TSMC’s 28 nm facilities. The HTC One X that’s going to launch in the United States on AT&T uses the S4, as does the lower end HTC One S. No chips mean no phones.

“28nm Kraits are not shipping to end users, and as far as we have heard, nothing has been given a definitive ship date. If there is a 2-3 week delay, the OEMs and carriers will be peeved, but the end user will have no clue about any problem. It is internal, logistical, and annoying, but not a PR disaster.

We don’t agree with that statement. From a PR perspective, HTC said that they’d have the One X out on the market within 60 days of announcing it. That would mean April 26th at the latest. Now yes, the international One X will probably hit the market on time since it uses NVIDIA’s Tegra 3, but how are Americans going to feel if they have to wait an extra month? Don’t you think Samsung would have announced the Galaxy S III by then? And don’t you think that some of those people who see the Galaxy S III will decide that it’s better to wait for Samsung’s flagship instead of buying HTC’s flagship?

We can’t confirm any of this of course, but time will reveal all.