What's going on?

TSMC, the world�s biggest contract chipmaker, revealed on Friday that business was booming in November.

What does this mean?

Talk about a killer month: TSMC raked in over $7 billion in revenue this November � a whopping 50% improvement from the same time last year � to bring this quarter�s revenue goal of around $20 billion within spitting distance. The reason for that sterling performance is simple: the firm�s top-of-the-range chip-making services were snapped up by titans like Qualcomm, while its favorite customer Apple has got TSMC producing chips to power its latest, high-end iPhone. That means that while whole swathes of the chip industry are being rocked to sleep by a spiraling global economy, TSMC�s still bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and bagging success after success.

Why should I care?

Zooming in: Caught in the crossfire.
TSMC�s based in disputed territory, Taiwan, and operates in a powder-keg industry � so despite the firm�s bumper revenue, its bosses probably aren�t sleeping all that soundly at night. After all, the US is trying to cut China off from the kind of high-tech chips TSMC specializes in, and is encouraging TSMC to take its operations to safer, overseas locations � to the US, in short. That meant that TSMC�s decision to up its investment in Arizona from $12 billion to $40 billion last week probably wasn�t a total bolt from the blue. But it could signal that the firm�s moving into a new, prominent role at the heart of US chipmaking.

The bigger picture: Made in China, soon.
China�s not going to take this lying down, mind you. The People�s Republic is bringing out the big guns, Alibaba and Tencent, to design chip tech rivaling anything the West has got its hands on. But Rome wasn�t built in a day, and experts think China�s vision of home-grown, first-class chips could remain a pipe dream for another few years.