Korea’s ‘big two’ chipmakers have rapidly increased output at their US facilities this year, and these have now overtaken imports from Korea in supplying the US market.
Samsung Electronics Co Ltd has been operating its Austin, Texas, chip plant at full capacity since early this year, turning out about 8 million 64MB DRAM chips a month. The output is equivalent to Samsung’s monthly US shipments from its Kihung plant, south of Seoul.
Hyundai Electronics Co’s facility at Eugene, Texas, also recently reached full capacity, according to reports in the Korean press, and is producing about 30,000 8-inch wafers a month, which allows it to provide about 70% of Hyundai’s 64MB DRAM sales in the US. Hyundai sells 80 million memory chips in the US market a year, and this year local output will account for 54 million chips, a company official said.
The Korea Herald quoted industry observers as saying the full-scale operations of Korean firms’ US plants will help ease trade pressures including dumping charges.
