Strengthening Foundry Business
According to industry sources, Samsung Electronics brought in managing director Kye Jong-wook from GlobalFoundries last month. He is currently working as the head of the design enablement team of its R&D office, which is a key foundry business unit.
Earlier, managing director Song Byeong-moo moved from Intel to Samsung Electronics, too. The semiconductor device development expert graduated from Cornel University is currently in charge of yield management, device performance improvement in foundry processes, and so on in the logic PA team of the R&D office. Master Yuri Masuoka, who was recently promoted to the position, is working with the managing director. The master worked for TSMC before moving to Samsung.
New System LSI Division President Kang In-yeop built his career in Qualcomm for 13 years, taking part in the development of every type of 3G and 4G modem chips. He moved to Samsung in 2010, recruited by Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee himself, and has led Samsung Electronics’ development of its own integrated mobile application processor since then.
These examples of recruitment from competitors are for Samsung Electronics to widen its gap with the other companies in the global semiconductor market. Samsung Electronics is expected to top the market this year by beating Intel, which has dominated the market for no less than 25 years. Samsung Electronics turned its foundry business arm into an independent business unit in May this year.
During its recent personnel reshuffle, new executive positions were given to a total of 221 persons and 99 of them were in the semiconductor division. The former figure is the highest since 2014 and the latter is an all-time high. More than 50% of the new executive positions went to its R&D arm.
According to market research firm IC Insights, the semiconductor division of Samsung Electronics and Intel are expected to reach US$65.6 billion and US$61 billion in annual sales at the end of this year, respectively.