Samsung Electronics Co has predicted that the long-depressed memorychip market is heading for recovery, after reporting profit for the third quarter well ahead of analysts’ estimates.
The South Korean giant’s net income totaled 5.5 trillion won (US$4.1 billion) in the third quarter, more than double expectations of 2.52 trillion won, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
A significant chunk of the profit, 1.9 trillion won, came from a one-time income tax gain.
Photo: AFP
Samsung’s chip division posted a 3.75 trillion won operating loss, narrower than the 4.4 trillion won loss a quarter earlier.
On a conference call, Samsung executives said that artificial intelligence (AI) is driving demand in the technology industry and memorychip inventories are declining after peaking in May.
“It’s very encouraging to see that chip inventory is coming down,” said Park Sang-hyun, an analyst who publishes on the SmartKarma platform. “However, we still need more evidence that ... memory demand is set to recover next year.”
South Korea’s largest company said it plans to trim capital expenditure for the semiconductor division to 47.5 trillion won this year, from 47.9 trillion won last year. Overall, its capital spending for this year is expected to reach a record 53.7 trillion won, compared with 53.1 trillion won last year.
The company’s display division more than doubled operating profit to 1.94 trillion won from the previous quarter.
Samsung said the increase was due to the release of flagship models from major customers, without identifying them.
Samsung’s division that includes its mobile business posted an operating profit of 3.73 trillion won, aided by new Galaxy Z foldable smartphones launched in the second half of this year.
Samsung mobile division vice president Daniel Araujo said that foldables would be “a key engine” for short-term growth.
“We’re open to the possibility of expanding the foldable category from only smartphones into other product groups like laptops and tablets,” Araujo said.
Samsung voiced optimism for the memorychip market overall.
It predicted that prices would rise this quarter compared with the third quarter.
Overall demand for such components would rise with the development of AI applications, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, it said.
Samsung executives said they would continue to invest in high-density memory chips, particularly in high-bandwidth memory (HBM), with plans to increase capacity by 2.5 times next year.
HBM is a type of advanced memory chip that stacks DRAM to process data more quickly. It works in tandem with AI hardware such as Nvidia Corp’s graphics accelerators, which speed up data processing for intensive tasks such as training AI models.
“We have already completed supply talks for next year with our key customers for this volume,” Samsung memory division executive vice president Min Jae-june said on the conference call. “We expect the recovery trend in the memory market to accelerate.”
TECH BOOST: New TSMC wafer fabs in Arizona are to dramatically improve US advanced chip production, a report by market research firm TrendForce said With Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) pouring large funds into Arizona, the US is expected to see an improvement in its status to become the second-largest maker of advanced semiconductors in 2027, Taipei-based market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said in a report last week. TrendForce estimates the US would account for a 21 percent share in the global advanced integrated circuit (IC) production market by 2027, sharply up from the current 9 percent, as TSMC is investing US$65 billion to build three wafer fabs in Arizona, the report said. TrendForce defined the advanced chipmaking processes as the 7-nanometer process or more
China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) plans to start mass-producing its most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip in the first quarter of next year, even as it struggles to make enough chips due to US restrictions, two people familiar with the matter said. The telecoms conglomerate has sent samples of the Ascend 910C — its newest chip, meant to rival those made by US chipmaker Nvidia Corp — to some technology firms and started taking orders, the sources told Reuters. The 910C is being made by top Chinese contract chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) on its N+2 process, but a lack
Who would not want a social media audience that grows without new content? During the three years she paused production of her short do-it-yourself (DIY) farmer’s lifestyle videos, Chinese vlogger Li Ziqi (李子柒), 34, has seen her YouTube subscribers increase to 20.2 million from about 14 million. While YouTube is banned in China, her fan base there — although not the size of YouTube’s MrBeast, who has 330 million subscribers — is close to 100 million across the country’s social media platforms Douyin (抖音), Sina Weibo (新浪微博) and Xiaohongshu (小紅書). When Li finally released new videos last week — ending what has
OPEN SCIENCE: International collaboration on math and science will persevere even if the incoming Trump administration imposes strict controls, Nvidia’s CEO said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said on Saturday that global cooperation in technology would continue even if the incoming US administration imposes stricter export controls on advanced computing products. US president-elect Donald Trump, in his first term in office, imposed restrictions on the sale of US technology to China citing national security — a policy continued under US President Joe Biden. The curbs forced Nvidia, the world’s leading maker of chips used for artificial intelligence (AI) applications, to change its product lineup in China. The US chipmaking giant last week reported record-high quarterly revenue on the back of strong AI chip
RSS