Digitimes has been testing its "industry sauces" and discovered that orders for smartphone-related chips has heated up and filled TSMC's 28nm process capacity with utilization rate reaching 110% in the third quarter.  This is expected to slow down as Intel slows down its baseband chip orders  This will lead to TSMC's 28nm process utilization rate seeing its first sequential fall since 2016 in the fourth quarter. To be fair TSMC has enjoyed strong demand for 28nm chips since 2012, so it is probably not going to be too upset.

TSMC's 28nm processes have attracted orders from major set-top box (STB) companies including Realtek , MStar and ALi. Chinesee HiSilicon, which is contracting TSMC to make its handset chips, also has STB solutions manufactured using TSMC's 28nm process technology.

Smartphone chip demand and related peripheral ICs, as well as STB chips, already filled TSMC's 28nm process capacity in the first half of 2016.