Samsung Display Co plans to spend 13.1 trillion won (US$11 billion) to develop and build next-generation displays, responding to a flood of supply and price pressure from fast-moving Chinese rivals.
In an announcement event attended by South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Samsung Electronics Co vice chairman Jay Y. Lee, the investment was presented as a move to reorganize the display industry while maintaining Samsung’s global lead and South Korea’s established dominance.
The government is to invest about 400 billion won into next-generation displays to propel that objective, Moon said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The Samsung unit will build a quantum-dot display production line in Asan, according to a company statement, which is to begin operations in 2021, with an initial monthly capacity of 30,000 panels larger than 65 inches.
Production would then be scaled up, with a long-term development plan that stretches out to 2025.
The investment would help create 81,000 jobs, the company said.
Samsung Display and South Korean peer LG Display Co are grappling with a surge of competition from Chinese suppliers, such as BOE Technology Group Co (京東方科技), which in recent years have ramped up LCD capacity and are increasingly making inroads into next-generation screens.
To offset a decline in margins and loss of clients, Samsung Display is moving forward with development of quantum-dot displays.
Lee has pledged to invest for the long-term in the display business, which is one of the three main pillars — alongside memory chips and smartphones — in which the South Korean tech champion is world leader.
The company is making a huge bet on the market, as the business environment deteriorates and a trade spat between Seoul and Tokyo creates uncertainty around the supply of chemicals and components necessary to manufacture advanced displays.
Samsung Electronics this week reported a quarterly profit decline of more than 50 percent, though that was less of a fall than anticipated.
South Korea’s largest company is the world’s foremost producer of high-margin OLED screens, but hit a snag last year when orders from Apple Inc underwhelmed after the marquee iPhone XS fared worse than expected.
It remains to be seen how enticing the new iPhone 11 Pro models will be to consumers over the critical holiday shopping season, though analysts are growing optimistic on demand.
Away from displays, the unpredictability surrounding tensions between the US and China has led to a downturn in the chip industry at a time when smartphone demand tapers off and the pace of data center construction decelerates.
Taiwan’s technology protection rules prohibits Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) from producing 2-nanometer chips abroad, so the company must keep its most cutting-edge technology at home, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. Kuo made the remarks in response to concerns that TSMC might be forced to produce advanced 2-nanometer chips at its fabs in Arizona ahead of schedule after former US president Donald Trump was re-elected as the next US president on Tuesday. “Since Taiwan has related regulations to protect its own technologies, TSMC cannot produce 2-nanometer chips overseas currently,” Kuo said at a meeting of the legislature’s
GEOPOLITICAL ISSUES? The economics ministry said that political factors should not affect supply chains linking global satellite firms and Taiwanese manufacturers Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) asked Taiwanese suppliers to transfer manufacturing out of Taiwan, leading to some relocating portions of their supply chain, according to sources employed by and close to the equipment makers and corporate documents. A source at a company that is one of the numerous subcontractors that provide components for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite Internet products said that SpaceX asked their manufacturers to produce outside of Taiwan because of geopolitical risks, pushing at least one to move production to Vietnam. A second source who collaborates with Taiwanese satellite component makers in the nation said that suppliers were directly
Top Taiwanese officials yesterday moved to ease concern about the potential fallout of Donald Trump’s return to the White House, making a case that the technology restrictions promised by the former US president against China would outweigh the risks to the island. The prospect of Trump’s victory in this week’s election is a worry for Taipei given the Republican nominee in the past cast doubt over the US commitment to defend it from Beijing. But other policies championed by Trump toward China hold some appeal for Taiwan. National Development Council Minister Paul Liu (劉鏡清) described the proposed technology curbs as potentially having
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list