Taiwan’s contract chipmaker TSMC surprised the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street by doing much better than expected. The outfit made a killing from its smartphone customers to record net profit in the third quarter.

TSMC earned a net profit of (US) $2.51 billion in the July-September period, versus expectations of $2.41 billion analysts expected. It also helped the company notch a 26 percent on-quarter rise in revenue from communication devices, even as computer-related revenue fell 6 percent. TSMC had reported net profit of $1.96 billion in the second quarter and $1.71 billion in the same three months of 2013.

Overall revenue of $6.88 billion in the third quarter also hit a record, eclipsing the $6.02 billion from the previous three months. Apple orders contribute about 6 percent of revenue for TSMC. Other TSMC clients such as Qualcomm and Broadcom supply Apple as well and Yuanta Securities analyst George Chang estimates that such second-hand orders contribute as much as another 15 percent to TSMC sales.

Qualcomm rival MediaTek whose chipsets are popular among low-cost smartphone vendors in emerging markets such as China, also counts TSMC as its main foundry partner.