In a statement,  company co-CEO Mark Liu said he expects to start production of 7nm chips in the first half of 2018.  He did not say if the node would be ready for volume production  or if it or just doing test production by that date. Both would be fairly ambitious.

TSMC's R&D timeline  for the 5nm process technology suggests it will be ready for launch in the first half of 2020.  It looks like it will be using extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to make them.

Liu claimed that TSMC had made significant progress with EUV to prepare for its likely insertion into 5nm," Liu indicated.

TSMC expects to qualify the 10 nm node in time for customer tape-outs in the first quarter of 2016, Liu said.

The outfit is predicting that its share of the 14/16nm foundry market segment will rise to more than 70 per cent  in 2016 from about 40 per cent  in 2015. TSMC's 16nm FinFET processes consisting of 16nm FinFET, 16nm FinFET Plus and 16nm FinFET Compact will account for more than 20 per cent of the foundry's total wafer revenues in 2016, the company said..

The new 16nm FFC node, a low-power and low-cost version of TSMC's 16nm FinFET products, will be ready for volume production in the first quarter of 2016, Wei added.

TSMC is on track to move its integrated fan-out (InFO) wafer-level packaging technology to volume production in the second quarter of 2016

. "We do not expect adoption by a large number of customers. However, we do expect a few very large volume customers," Wei said.

Apple is probably going to be among the first adopting the InFO packaging technology, which many of its users will believe Steve Jobs invented.