Pure-play foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has started seeing chip orders for Android devices ramp up recently, with its fabless clients including HiSilicon, MediaTek and Qualcomm stepping up their pace of orders, according to industry sources.

In particular, the sources continued, TSMC has seen orders placed by HiSilicon for the second quarter outpace those placed by its other mobile SoC customers. HiSilicon is expected to provide as high as 70% of total smartphone chips demanded by Huawei.

Huawei also uses chips provided by MediaTek and Qualcomm, which are both set to see orders for Huawei's smartphones decline in 2019 given Huawei's more reliance on its chip design subsidiary, the sources noted.

With HiSilicon ramping wafer starts to satisfy the growing demand from Huawei, TSMC may see total orders placed for Huawei's devices exceed those for Apple's iPhones in the first three quarters of 2019, the sources indicated. Apple remains TSMC's biggest client.

HiSilicon is expected to become TSMC's largest 7nm customer in 2019, a recent Chinese-language Commercial Times report quoted sources at chipmaking equipment suppliers as saying. HiSilicon is looking to scale up its 7nm chip orders with TSMC by around 8,000 wafers monthly starting the third quarter of 2019, and by a total of 50,000-55,000 units in the second half of the year, according to the report.

In addition, MediaTek has increased its orders to TSMC to support the arrival of its new-generation mobile SoCs including the Helio P90 series, while Qualcomm is demanding capacity support from the foundry for its forthcoming Snapdragon 855 chips, the sources said. Nevertheless, the pace of growth in their orders placed with TSMC for the first half of 2019 is relatively small compared to that in orders placed by HiSilicon.