Samsung To Invest $24 Billion in Chip Operations
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&quot;Preemptive investment is critical to success in the chip industry,&quot; Company Chairman Lee Kun-Hee said in a statement. He stressed that the semiconductor industry should continue to serve as a key &quot;growth engine&quot; for the national economy.
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(InfoWorld) - Samsung Electronics saw a sharp fall in operating profits during the three months from April to June due to theÂ weak marketÂ for computer memory chips. Prices of the chips, which are used for the main memory in personal computers, fell because supply exceeded demand. That hit Samsung because it's one of the world's largest makers of DRAM (dynamic RAM) chips. The company said operating profit was 910 billion won ($985 million) as of the last day of the period being reported), which is down from 1.4 trillion won ($1.5 billion) in the second quarter of 2006. Net profit, which is a wider measure of profitability and includes subsidiaries and non-core operations, was down slightly at 1.42 trillion won from 1.5 trillion won a year earlier. Net sales were up 4 percent to 14.6 trillion won. "Despite the dire business environment, such as the precipitous fall of DRAM (dynamic RAM) prices and seasonality, we have posted a decent result in Q2," said Chu Woosik, head of investor relations at Samsung, in a conference call with analysts. Profits at Samsung's semiconductor unit dropped by two-thirds as a result of the weak DRAM market. The good news, said Chu, is that the DRAM market is already starting to show signs of a turn-around, thanks to interest in Windows Vista PCs, which require more memory. During the remainder of the year the market for DRAM chips is expected to be strong, he said. Strong demand for Apple's iPhone and competing handsets are alsoÂ expected to keep up pricesÂ and profits for NAND flash memory, which is Samsung's other major memory chip product, strong. Chu said Samsung is in talks with several consumer electronics companies about supplying chips for as-yet-unannounced portable media players with video. Samsung's cellphone handset business was one of the brightest spots in the results. The company shipped a record 37.4 million phones in the quarter thanks to the popularity of its thin "Ultra" edition handsets. The second quarter was the fourth consecutive quarter in which Samsung reported record sales. As a result Samsung said it now expects to ship more than 150 million phones this year, up from its previous target of 133 million. The LCD (liquid crystal display) business enjoyed brisk business and Samsung shipped a record 2 million displays in the 40-inch and above class. Sales rose by 17 percent and operating profits surged 290 percent. Looking ahead, Chu said Samsung expects the remainder of the year to be strong for the company. "We are very optimistic about the second half," he said. "We are expecting all of our major business units to experience very high levels of demand and recovery starting from Q3. As a result of such an improvement coupled with our vigorous attempts to reduce cost, we are hoping to see significant improvements in the bottom line in Q3. We expect this nice recovery to last throughout the rest of the year." Â
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IBM planned to announce yesterday that it will invest US$250 million over the next five years and employ 1,000 people in a new business unit to support products and services related to sensor networks.
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Samsung ready for multi-core WiMax Flashy UK chip designer picoChip has secured Samsung as a major investor in a fresh $27m round of funding. The cash infusion from Samsung would seem to open a spot for picoChip's products in the giant's WiMax base stations.â¦
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InfoWorld - Samsung Electronics has developed a chip-manufacturing technique able to significantly increase the amount of music, pictures, videos, and other data people can store in future iPods, iPhones, and other devices.
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Korean chipmaker Samsung says it will invest 25 trillion won building new chip production lines over the next six years.
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Seoul (dpa) - South Korean electronics giant Samsung said Monday it plans to invest 25 trillion won (24 billion dollars) in the production of semiconductors over the next six years.
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Samsung Electronics announced Monday that it has developed an 8GB NAND-type flash memory chip with a 60-nano design rule, paving the way for 16GB flash disks.
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LONDON, December 27  - Electronics equipment manufacturer Samsung Electronics (SSUN.FSE) announced today that production at its second production line for the new generation Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) units may begin six months ahead
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South Korea's Samsung Electronics claimed breakthroughs in key technologies that promise greater data storage and faster processing for computers and mobile devices such as MP3 audio players.
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NXP will start shipping its single-chip  solution for ultra-low-cost phones to Samsung  from  the fourth quarter of this year, Chief Executive Frans van  Houten told Reuters on Friday.
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Infineon Technologies, the second-largest chip maker in Europe, said Wednesday that it planned to invest about $1 billion in a new factory in Malaysia to expand its automotive chip business and be closer to customers in the region.
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SAN JOSE, Calif. - South Korean DRAM maker Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., said Thursday (Oct. 28) that it &quot;played an integral role in the development and manufacturing&quot; of the Personal Internet Communicator (PIC), announced by Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
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Samsung&#39;s net income rose to US$2.34 billion from $1.60 billion last year. Sales gained 27.4 percent to $12.9 billion from $9.
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Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chip maker, announced better-than-expected results for 2004 and a positive outlook for 2005, in a boost to the struggling global IT sector.
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Korean chipmaker expects global sales will halve next year; sales growth could be in single digit. SEOUL  - Growth in global semiconductor sales will probably halve next year and memory chip sales
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LOS ANGELES, Feb 26  â Intel, the chip maker, said on Monday that it would spend $1 billion to $1.5 billion to retool a factory in New Mexico to start making chips with advanced 45-nanometer-wide transistors in the second half of 2008.