RISING CHIP PRICES TO BENEFIT KOREAN SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY
Story Filed: Monday, June 26, 2000 2:05 AM EST
SEOUL, Jun 26, 2000 (AsiaPulse via COMTEX) -- The Korean semiconductor industry has been enjoying a boom with rising prices, and the trend is expected to pick up during the latter half, business sources said Monday.
During the second half, demand is expected to exceed supply.
Samsung Electronics (KSE: 05930) raked in net profits of 3.1 trillion won (US$2.77 billion) during the first five months of this year, and expects its yearly profit to hit 7 trillion won, compared with 3.1 trillion won for all of last year. Hyundai Electronics Industries (00660) also expects its net profit to surpass 1 trillion won this year.
Every year at this time, from June through July, it was customary to see demand slumping and prices going down, but this year the trend reversed, with rising demand bidding prices higher. Recently, the price of 64-M DRAM is hovering between US$8.15 and US$9.64 on the international spot market.
The prices of 128-M DRAM and flash memory chips have also been rising.
The market for 128-M DRAM has been surging. Samsung Electronics expects the output of 128-M DRAM to surpass that of 64-M DRAM during the third quarter.
The market for Rambus DRAM, which is about 10 times faster than synchronous DRAM, has also been expanding sharply.
Korean makers now account for about 10 percent of the world DRAM market, and expects its market share to grow to about 50 percent of the world market by 2002.
Samsung Electronics, meanwhile, plans to keep the output of 64-M DRAM at the present level, but increase the monthly output of 128-M DRAM to about 20 million by the end of this year from the current level of 10 million. Samsung now accounts for 80 percent of the world's Rambus DRAM market.
Hyundai Electronics plans to expand its monthly output of 128-M DRAM to 10 million by the end of this year.
(YONHAP)
(C) 2000 Asia Pulse Pte Ltd |
