SMIC Semiconductor Foundry Announces Strategy for Market Expansion Amid Industry Shifts

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), China's leading chip foundry, has released a strategic action plan aimed at capturing new growth opportunities. The company disclosed this initiative alongside its 2025 annual report through a stock exchange filing on Thursday. SMIC's strategy focuses on achieving above-average growth this year by implementing a dual approach described as 'optimizing existing stock and digging for new increments.' The company identified two significant trends expected to benefit China's domestic semiconductor industry in the current year: the relocation of supply chains back to China from overseas locations and the substitution of older imported products with newer domestically manufactured alternatives. To capitalize on these developments, SMIC plans to enhance its capabilities in specialized technical areas including BCD technology—which integrates bipolar, CMOS, and DMOS processes on a single chip—along with analog chips, specialized memory chips, and microcontroller units. This strategic announcement occurs during a period of global semiconductor supply chain pressure caused by a memory chip super cycle. Increased production of advanced memory chips to meet artificial intelligence data center demands is consuming global wafer manufacturing capacity and elevating production expenses. SMIC acknowledged this disruptive cycle, noting that robust AI-driven memory demand is currently constricting supply for memory chips used in smartphones and other mid-to-low-end electronic products.