Friday, December 30th 2022
South Korean Chip Makers Affected by Slump in Chip Demand
It's not just TSMC and the other Taiwanese chip makers that are seeing a dip in demand, the Korean chip makers have seen a slump of 15 percent in the past four months, compared to 2021. This is said to be the biggest drop in chip demand since 2009 according to data from Statistics Korea. There's a combination of factors behind the slump in demand, especially when it comes to memory related products, where inventories already are high, combined with inflation and a low demand.
According to the Financial Times, an analyst at JPMorgan in Korea isn't expecting things to improve until 2024 at the earliest. Just like Micron and Kioxia, SK hynix is looking at cutting spending on new fabs and production lines, although as TPU reported earlier this week, Samsung is going its own way, by continuing to invest in new fabs and production lines. Samsung is expected to have a capex of US$37.5 billion this year back in October, although based on the increase in costs, the capex would have increased in the fourth quarter of the year. On the plus side, it seems like the shortage of semiconductors should ease in 2023 and hopefully return to more normal levels.
Source:
FT.com
According to the Financial Times, an analyst at JPMorgan in Korea isn't expecting things to improve until 2024 at the earliest. Just like Micron and Kioxia, SK hynix is looking at cutting spending on new fabs and production lines, although as TPU reported earlier this week, Samsung is going its own way, by continuing to invest in new fabs and production lines. Samsung is expected to have a capex of US$37.5 billion this year back in October, although based on the increase in costs, the capex would have increased in the fourth quarter of the year. On the plus side, it seems like the shortage of semiconductors should ease in 2023 and hopefully return to more normal levels.
19 Comments on South Korean Chip Makers Affected by Slump in Chip Demand
If no shortage then one must be manufactured asap ;)
Saturation can happen usually because of retail costs are way to high
Hopefully the buyers market will come around and fix things in due time I personally love a buyers market way more than sellers markets seeing I save more money.
We're moving forward to challenging economic times. It was inevitable due to disease and war, which forced our supply lines and stressed them severely in unpredictable ways. We needed a boom to make up for all the supplies that were suddenly needed... but now we're entering the (somewhat predictable) bust. No one really knows how deep this bust period will go.
Lets hope for that "soft landing". We'll need all the luck we can get.
These companies took public money all the while manipulating supply, jacking up prices, and now laying off people to further control that supply.
The source of the current world's woes is pure greed. COVID and war and just convenient excuses for them to rake in more cash. They see each disaster as an opportunity to bilk people, truly soulless.
I see vehicles still rare though…..
In fact, I think this is only the beginning of fab pains given that they have expanded and are still expanding very aggressively. While demand for chip is also contributed by the EV car industry, but most people don't change their cars annually like they do with cell phones.
fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS
I wonder what caused 22-million workers to leave our economy in 2020.
In contrast, we can see the entire length of 2010 through 2019 and I don't think there's any problems (no inflation problems, or worker problems). Blaming the policies of 2010 or 2014 seems to be a rather insane conclusion when we all know full well what happened in 2020.
Don't get me wrong. We have a frothy, bubbly investor class due to the low interest rates. I'd blame something like the Cryptocoin bubble, as well as the meme-stock problem on low interest rates. But when we look at fundamental attributes of the US economy (ie: workers vs inflation), the statistics are great in the 2010 through 2019 period.