The impact of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company's production of Apple CPUs and related peripheral chips on the supply chain of Taiwan's semiconductor industry will widen in 2015, forcing IC design houses to place wafer orders earlier in the year, according to industry sources.

TSMC normally performs its annual maintenance during the Lunar New Year holidays in the first quarter, before orders begin to pick up steam in the second quarter of each year. Wafer orders typically peak in the third quarter before sliding down in the fourth quarter.

However, this production pattern will no longer prevail in 2014. TSMC has advised its other customers to place more orders in the first half of the year, in order to avoid competition for wafer production capacity with suppliers for Apple related products, the sources noted.

Some IC suppliers for not-Apple mobile devices apparently have not taken the advice and have continued placing follow-up orders in the second half of 2014, prolonging the tight production schedules at TSMC into the end of the year, said the sources.

To prevent tight production from recurring in 2015, TSMC is expected to persuade suppliers of non-Apple devices to place wafer orders in the first half of 2015, preferably in the first quarter, indicated the sources.