Foundry Business Strengthened
It has been found that Samsung Electronics is planning to set up a foundry business unit in its Device Solutions (DS) Division in charge of semiconductor business and so on. This has to do with today’s rapid growth of the global foundry market.
At present, the company’s foundry business arm is a team under its System LSI Division. After the reorganization, however, the semiconductor division of Samsung Electronics consists of memory, system LSI and foundry business units.
Foundry refers to the manufacturing of semiconductor chips for fabless companies, which conduct only semiconductor design without their own production lines and entrust the manufacturing by providing their design plans. According to market research firm IHS Markit, Samsung Electronics’ foundry sales increased from US$2.529 billion to US$4.518 billion between 2015 and 2016 with a year-on-year growth of no less than 78.6%.
Samsung Electronics is aiming to raise its market share ranking in the market from the fourth spot to at least the third by establishing the new business unit. As of the end of last year, TSMC, a Taiwanese company, topped the market and it was followed by UMC and GlobalFoundries, which are firms headquartered in Taiwan and the United States.