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Posted : 2016-07-20 16:29
Updated : 2016-07-20 16:29
China's memory chip investment threatens Korea
By Choi Sung-jin
Chinese businesses are stepping up efforts to localize memory chip production through massive investment, industry sources said Tuesday.
According to Chinese media, Fujian Electronics and Information Group broke ground last Saturday on a memory chip plant in a semiconductor industrial complex in Jinjiang, Fujian Province, in a joint venture with the local governments of Quanzhou and Jinjiang.
In the first phase, the company plans to invest 37 billion yuan ($5.53 billion) to build and operate the plant with a capacity of 60,000 sheets of 12-inch wafers a month by 2018. The group, to be subsidized 3 billion yuan from the Chinese central government, plans to double the plant's capacity within five years.
The Xinhua News Agency reported that the group's investment plan followed similar announcements by Tsinghua Unigroup in Beijing and XMC in Wuhan to invest about 80 billion yuan and 160 billion yuan, respectively, for localizing memory chip production. Put together, the three companies will invest 270 billion yuan.
The groundbreaking for the chip plant's construction marks the first project launched by the Fujian Province Semiconductor Industry Investment Fund, established jointly in June by the three municipal governments in Fujian, Chenzhou and Jinjiang.
The Taiwanese and Japanese are about to join China's memory chip localization drive. Sino King Technology, started by Yukio Sakamoto, former CEO of Elpida Memory, which was Japan's largest memory chip maker, has decided to set up a chip plant with the municipal administration of Hefei, Anhui Province.
Sino King's plant, which will start with a capacity of 100,000 sheets of 12-inch wafers a month, will reportedly invite 20 to 30 Taiwanese experts to design semiconductors and operate the plant, sources said.
Xinhua said China has sustained the biggest trade deficit in global semiconductor markets, importing $200 billion of computer chips a year. And while memory chips have been important links in China's semiconductor industrial chain, the market has long been dominated by foreign businesses, it said.
In China's DRAM chip market in the first quarter, three foreign companies -- Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix of Korea and Micron of the United States -- accounted for 93 percent of supply. In the NAND flash sector, too, six foreign makers, including the three and Japan's Toshiba, dominated the market, the state news agency said.
"The semiconductor industry is a basic, strategic and initiating sector for economic growth and information security of the state," Xinhua quoted a ranking Chinese official who attended the groundbreaking ceremony.
The current lull in foreign makers' investment provides good opportunities for Chinese companies to catch up with advanced competitors abroad, a Taiwanese industry expert was quoted as saying. "In the next five or 10 years, Chinese companies will have opportunities to compete with foreign giants."
Industry watchers here said it would be noteworthy whether Korean companies follow the example of domestic smartphone and heavy-duty equipment makers. Samsung Electronics, the world's largest smartphone maker and once the market leader in China, was overtaken by Huawei in 2014 and is not even among the top-five providers. Doosan Infracore, which had been the largest supplier of excavators in China, lost the top spot to China's Sanyi Group in 2010, and was pushed below No. 5.
Along with the rapid expansion of China's computer chip industry, the world's second-largest economy is emerging as a major market for semiconductor equipment. According to Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, China's semiconductor equipment market is expected to grow 12.9 percent to $7.2 billion next year, recording a 1.5-times expansion in just two years to be the world's third-largest market.
Taiwan will be the largest semiconductor equipment market with $10 billion in 2017, up 5.9 percent from this year, and that of Korea is estimated to increase 29.5 percent to $7.9 billion.
Fujian Electronics, Tsinghua Unigroup and other Chinese makers localizing memory chip production want to move beyond the simple operation of plants to establishing a semiconductor industrial chain complete with independent intellectual property rights, the experts said. China's emergence in this industry will provide opportunities and challenges for Korea's semiconductor equipment makers, they said.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2016/07/123_209882.html
Updated : 2016-07-20 16:29
China's memory chip investment threatens Korea
By Choi Sung-jin
Chinese businesses are stepping up efforts to localize memory chip production through massive investment, industry sources said Tuesday.
According to Chinese media, Fujian Electronics and Information Group broke ground last Saturday on a memory chip plant in a semiconductor industrial complex in Jinjiang, Fujian Province, in a joint venture with the local governments of Quanzhou and Jinjiang.
In the first phase, the company plans to invest 37 billion yuan ($5.53 billion) to build and operate the plant with a capacity of 60,000 sheets of 12-inch wafers a month by 2018. The group, to be subsidized 3 billion yuan from the Chinese central government, plans to double the plant's capacity within five years.
The Xinhua News Agency reported that the group's investment plan followed similar announcements by Tsinghua Unigroup in Beijing and XMC in Wuhan to invest about 80 billion yuan and 160 billion yuan, respectively, for localizing memory chip production. Put together, the three companies will invest 270 billion yuan.
The groundbreaking for the chip plant's construction marks the first project launched by the Fujian Province Semiconductor Industry Investment Fund, established jointly in June by the three municipal governments in Fujian, Chenzhou and Jinjiang.
The Taiwanese and Japanese are about to join China's memory chip localization drive. Sino King Technology, started by Yukio Sakamoto, former CEO of Elpida Memory, which was Japan's largest memory chip maker, has decided to set up a chip plant with the municipal administration of Hefei, Anhui Province.
Sino King's plant, which will start with a capacity of 100,000 sheets of 12-inch wafers a month, will reportedly invite 20 to 30 Taiwanese experts to design semiconductors and operate the plant, sources said.
Xinhua said China has sustained the biggest trade deficit in global semiconductor markets, importing $200 billion of computer chips a year. And while memory chips have been important links in China's semiconductor industrial chain, the market has long been dominated by foreign businesses, it said.
In China's DRAM chip market in the first quarter, three foreign companies -- Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix of Korea and Micron of the United States -- accounted for 93 percent of supply. In the NAND flash sector, too, six foreign makers, including the three and Japan's Toshiba, dominated the market, the state news agency said.
"The semiconductor industry is a basic, strategic and initiating sector for economic growth and information security of the state," Xinhua quoted a ranking Chinese official who attended the groundbreaking ceremony.
The current lull in foreign makers' investment provides good opportunities for Chinese companies to catch up with advanced competitors abroad, a Taiwanese industry expert was quoted as saying. "In the next five or 10 years, Chinese companies will have opportunities to compete with foreign giants."
Industry watchers here said it would be noteworthy whether Korean companies follow the example of domestic smartphone and heavy-duty equipment makers. Samsung Electronics, the world's largest smartphone maker and once the market leader in China, was overtaken by Huawei in 2014 and is not even among the top-five providers. Doosan Infracore, which had been the largest supplier of excavators in China, lost the top spot to China's Sanyi Group in 2010, and was pushed below No. 5.
Along with the rapid expansion of China's computer chip industry, the world's second-largest economy is emerging as a major market for semiconductor equipment. According to Japan's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, China's semiconductor equipment market is expected to grow 12.9 percent to $7.2 billion next year, recording a 1.5-times expansion in just two years to be the world's third-largest market.
Taiwan will be the largest semiconductor equipment market with $10 billion in 2017, up 5.9 percent from this year, and that of Korea is estimated to increase 29.5 percent to $7.9 billion.
Fujian Electronics, Tsinghua Unigroup and other Chinese makers localizing memory chip production want to move beyond the simple operation of plants to establishing a semiconductor industrial chain complete with independent intellectual property rights, the experts said. China's emergence in this industry will provide opportunities and challenges for Korea's semiconductor equipment makers, they said.
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2016/07/123_209882.html