AFAICT this means TSMC has no competition for 7nm for their fabless customers, which means they have no incentive to invest in getting to the next process node — their customers' BATNA is now "spend several billion dollars building your own <7nm fab." So I think this is the end of Moore's law for everyone except possibly Intel and Samsung.
They need their customers to be competitive with their competitors, right? If Intel and Samsung by are still in the game, then AMD and Apple can only survive if TSMC remains competitive?
That's sort of AMD and Apple's problem, not TSMC's. You can't expect TSMC executives to risk TSMC's future by building a multibillion-dollar 5nm fab, which may fail, when there are plenty of other customers out there for their unique (?) 7nm process, on the theory that not moving to 5nm would be bad for the overall health of the semiconductor industry.
