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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: StanX Long who wrote (63016)	4/19/2002 3:56:05 AM
From: StanX Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Record profits for Korean chipmaker Friday, 19 April, 2002, 05:20 GMT 06:20 UK news.bbc.co.uk Chip prices are coming bcak from record lows of the past year Korea's chipmakers have bounced back from the hard times last year in the tech sector, with memory chip giant Samsung reporting record profits. For the first three months of this year, Samsung Electronics made a net income of 1.9 trillion won ($1.45bn; £1bn), up 53% from the 1.24 trillion recorded in the same period of 2001. The net profits came on the back of sales up 15% to 9.9 trillion won. The margins on which Samsung operates - the ratio of profit to revenue - climbed to 27% from 18% for the whole of 2001 in the competitive information and telecoms business. And in Singapore, contract semiconductor maker Chartered Semi saw its losses narrow even more than analysts had hoped as it reassured investors that 2002 would bring a strong recovery. Back in the black The upsurge in chip prices which is making PC manufacturers' lives more difficult is good news for Samsung. In November 2001, the memory chips of which Samsung is the biggest producer in the world could be had for about $1 apiece, thanks to huge over supply. Prices have quadrupled since then. Prices are unlikely to go up much in the next couple of months as capacity starts to build again, the company said. Phone surge The company's other speciality is mobile phones, and in a declining market it was the fastest growing vendor worldwide in 2001, with a market share of 7.9%. Sales of 9.5 million handsets for the first quarter exceeded expectations, the company said, and this year it is aiming to lift its performance to 37 million units for the full year, for an 8.5% share. That contrasts with the worse than expected figures from mobile phone market leader Nokia released on Thursday.