Semiconductor chips are at the heart of modern technology,.. they power our laptops, smartphones
and other gadgets.
Korea is a world-leading producer of memory chips,... and, in recent months, local companies
have seen sales go through the roof.
Oh Soo-young has more.
The outlook is bright for Korean chipmakers this year.
Industry observers say it's a period of high demand-- a so-called "supercycle" for memory
semiconductors-- and Korean businesses are leading the global market.
Samsung Electronics produces almost half the world's DRAM chips, which are a key component
of computers, smartphones and other digital devices.
SK Hynix comes second, taking up a quarter of the global market share.
Another important part of the memory chip sector is NAND flash,... a more permanent
form of storage found in smartphones, tablet PCs, and the average flash drive.
Samsung and SK Hynix account for about half the NAND flash market.
Analysts say the two companies have bumped up their investment in memory chips this year--
with a combined 14 billion U.S. dollars spent on facilities alone-- that's almost 30 percent
more than in 2016.
Samsung, for one,... is opening up the world's largest chip factory in Pyeongtaek this year
to produce its latest 3D vertical NAND chips.
With its eyes on expansion, the Korean tech giant is expected to overtake Intel this year,...
as the world's number one supplier for the entire semiconductor industry.
"The global appetite for Intel's PC processing chips is dwindling while Samsung's SSDs are
seeing increasing demand.
Samsung is expected to see its operating profit for semiconductors jump to around 27 billion
dollars, from 11.5 billion last year.
SK Hynix is also likely to see its profits quadruple to more than 10 billion dollars."
However, with the memory chip market only accounting for around a third of the semiconductor
market,... experts say there's room for more growth.
Samsung and SK Hynix are scaling up technologies in non-memory, or systems semiconductors,...
like processing chips for PCs, handsets, displays and sensors for cameras.
Korean firms are also enhancing their foundry businesses, which provide services for non-memory
chip developers without 'fabs', or their own production facilities.
But more than anything,... experts believe Korean companies must come up with new, paradigm-shifting
chips that will bring about a "creative destruction" of the current technology within the next
five years.
Oh Soo-young, Arirang News.
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