3rd Generation
Samsung Electronics is going to release a large number of new semiconductors in the latter half of this year to accelerate efforts to improve profitability. The company is expected to make additional investments in an effort to secure a competitive advantage in technology.
"I think that 3rd-gen V-NAND will be produced as early as the third quarter or in Oct. at the latest," said Baek Ji-ho, vice president of Samsung's memory chip unit, at a conference call on July 30, following its announcement of results for Q2 2015. He also noted, "The 3rd-gen V-NAND is likely to be more competitive than any other product in terms of the cost of production." He added, "I believe that our company can increase demand for high-end products, based on high reliability, high capacity, and high product performance, which are the strong points of V-NAND."
As for DRAM, Samsung is planning to focus on profitability rather than market share. DRAM is a representative product of Samsung's semiconductor unit and the top contributor to the company's performance in Q2.
Baek echoed the same sentiments by saying, "We will do our best to secure profitability instead of market share," adding, "Most DRAM that Samsung will ship early next year would be 20 nm DRAM.” It can be interpreted as a strategy to widen the gap with latecomers in the market by increasing the mass-production of highly-profitable 20 nm DRAM.
Samsung's system LSI business, which has successfully turned profitable, is preparing for a takeoff. "I think that the production of 14 nm application processors will increase sharply in the latter half of this year," said Hong Kyu-sik, vice president of the system LSI business. He added, "Compared to the latter half of 2014, the sale of 14 nm chips is likely to grow a lot this year."