According to bean counters at IC Insights the entire increase in pure-play foundry sales is forecast to be due to sales of devices built using sub 40nm sizes.

IC Insights predicted that 63 per cent TSMC's 2015 sales will be based on ICs built using sub-45nm technology. Furthermore, TSMC is forecast to have about US$5.7 billion in sales of ?20nm devices in 2015 ($5.1 billion from 20nm and about $0.6 billion from 16nm devices). This is 2.7 times more than the US$2.1 billion worth of sub-20nm product the company sold in 2014.

TSMC began volume shipments of its 16nm devices in the third quarter of 2015 and stated, "The ramping of our 16nm will be very steep, even steeper than our 20nm."

The portion of sub-45nm sales at Globalfoundries is expected to decrease five percentage points from Q2 to Q3.

This is because of the inclusion of IBM's chip sales, much of which is large feature size RF devices, in Globalfoundries' sales figures beginning in the third quarter of 2015.

A third of UMC's total sales are forecast to come from sub-45nm technology in 2015 and SMIC is expected to sell only $363 million worth of ?45nm ICs in 2015, or only 2 per cent of the level of TSMC's sub-45nm sales forecast for 2015.