South Korea’s SK Hynix Inc, the world’s second-largest maker of memory chips, yesterday said that some customers have brought forward orders in preparation for new US tariffs on semiconductors.
Speaking at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting, SK Hynix head of global sales and marketing Lee Sang-rak said the “pull-in” effects, along with the reduction in customers’ inventory, led to favorable market conditions.
However, he added that it remains to be seen whether the trend would continue.
Photo: Jung Yeon-je, AFP
The US’ Micron Technology Inc and SanDisk Corp, and China’s Yangtze Memory Technologies Co (長江存儲) have raised their chip prices, partly due to robust demand from the artificial intelligence (AI) market, media reports said.
US President Donald Trump has said he intends to impose tariffs on imports of semiconductors and some other products “in the neighborhood of 25 percent.”
“Fears that the US may impose semiconductor tariffs in April have led to pre-emptive transfers of semiconductor inventory to the United States,” Nomura Holdings Inc said in a report this week.
“It is not yet known if the tariffs will actually be imposed; if this materializes, it could lead to higher prices for set products, which could dampen demand,” it added.
SK Hynix expects “explosive growth” in high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips demand this year, backed by investments in data centers, company CEO Kwak Noh-jung told shareholders.
In January, SK Hynix forecast that sales of its HBM chips would more than double this year.
“Our HBM sales for 2025 have already been sold out, and we plan to finalize sales with customers for the 2026 volume within the first half of this year to further strengthen revenue stability,” Kwak said.
While doubts around a slowdown in spending on AI hardware emerged in January following DeepSeek’s (深度求索) claims that it had developed AI models rivaling Western counterparts at a fraction of cost, Nvidia last month signaled that its AI chip demand was intact.
Kwak saw DeepSeek’s emergence as ultimately beneficial.
“This could likely have a positive impact on medium to long-term demand for AI memory chips. From our perspective, we don’t see DeepSeek slowing down demand for high-performance accelerators or HBM,” Kwak said.
Starlux Airlines Co (星宇航空) today unveiled a long-haul network expansion plan at a shareholders’ meeting in Taipei, including direct flights to Barcelona, Spain, and Zurich, Switzerland, as well as a service connecting Taipei, Sydney and New Zealand. Starlux is to become the first Taiwanese carrier to offer non-stop services to the two European cities, while the inaugural oceanic route is expected to expand transit opportunities within the Australia-New Zealand market, Starlux said. Flight services to Chicago, Dallas, Washington and New York are under evaluation, the airline added. Prior to the shareholders’ meeting, the airline earlier this year announced that it would be
Netherlands-based semiconductor equipment supplier ASML Holding NV yesterday said that it is planning to hire an additional 1,000 people in Taiwan this year in response to growing demand from clients. ASML had previously planned to recruit 600 people this year, but that the plan has been adjusted upward, ASML vice president and ASML Taiwan general manager Grace Wang (汪佳慧) told reporters. ASML has a workforce of more than 4,500 in Taiwan, accounting for about 10 percent of its global total, Wang said. This year’s recruitment campaign would focus on adding people in the customer support, manufacturing and supply chain domains to assist ASML
UNDER MICROSCOPE: Taiwan detained three people who allegedly conspired to buy servers in Taiwan and export them using fraudulent documentation, prosecutors said Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Saturday urged Super Micro Computer Inc to tighten up on compliance after Taiwan detained three people this week for allegedly making fraudulent declarations about artificial intelligence (AI) servers made by its US partner. The development marked the nation’s first crackdown on semiconductor smuggling, which grew after the US slapped restrictions on exports of high-end chips such as Nvidia AI accelerators to China. Nvidia is “rigorous” in explaining regulations to all of its partners, Huang told reporters after arriving in Taipei. “Ultimately Super Micro has to run their own company,” he said in response to
Nvidia Corp yesterday announced that CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) would attend an employee meeting in Taipei tomorrow to celebrate the launch of the company’s Taiwan headquarters project. Huang would attend a gathering at the site of Nvidia’s planned headquarters in Beitou Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區), the company said in a statement. After arriving in Taiwan on Saturday last week, Huang told reporters that he plans to meet with Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), and would attend the groundbreaking ceremony for Nvidia’s Taiwan headquarters tomorrow. Nvidia has not yet applied
RSS