Expansion of Production Lines
Samsung Electronics will begin the construction of a semiconductor factory in Xian, China at the end of this month by investing a total of 8 trillion won (US$7.2 billion) in the expansion of production lines.
"Samsung decided to start the construction of a factory for the second line to produce 3D NAND flashes at the Xian factory," said an official in the semiconductor industry.
Samsung Electronics is expected to start construction at the end of this month in consideration of various external variables such as meeting global demand and its super-gap strategy. As a result, Samsung Electronics set a record for pushing forward with the construction of three new semiconductor production lines at the same time as the company broke ground for a new plant in Hwasung and will begin to build plants in Pyeongtaek, and Xian, China in a year.
The two lines of the Xian plant will cope with a rise in NAND flash demand as a total of 8 trillion won will be invested in them by 2020. Samsung Electronics already secured a site for the second line when it built the first line in Xian. If expansion is done as planned, commercial operation will start next year, and 3D NAND flashes will be intensively produced. Samsung Electronics is mass-producing 4G V-NAND flashes and is increasing its global competitiveness by actively entering the premium market by installing them in high-performance solid state drives (SSDs).
The semiconductor industry expects that the completion of the second line will cement Samsung Electronics's dominance of the NAND flash market. According to market researcher DRAMExchange, Samsung's NAND flash sales leaped up 9.8 percent from the previous quarter to US$6.17 billion in the fourth quarter of last year. Its market share also rose 1 percentage point to 38 percent from 37 percent in the third quarter.